Making Laws for Clouds (6 page)

Then she's gone. Maybe I can hear her feet on the deck, maybe I can't. She's a quiet walker. She saves her energy for when she means it.

She misses me. And it isn't over. Tanika Bell. We had ten seconds there, ten or twelve, and she didn't waste them. That's her all over. Much more dynamic than most of these people realise and, one day, that'll give us an edge. Tanika, up there in the light, coming for paint she knew I wouldn't have, folding her arms on the railing and leaning over, showing us both twelve seconds of how things might have been if the past month hadn't happened. How things might be, when enough time's passed. Maybe.

These might be early versions of the thoughts that Father Steele says are lustful thoughts, but they might also be the kind that he said were quite okay. We did some counselling after the incident, and that was supposed to see me right. That was Steelo's plan. It was only when Mr Bell got wise to what had happened that it all turned bad and I ended up on the outer. So did Tanika. She didn't see the outside world till Christmas, other than work and groceries and the trips to church for her sessions with Steelo.

Mum said I was an idiot and I could spoil it for the whole family and hadn't I learned anything? Anything from the past, from her and dad, and me coming along when she was seventeen? Didn't I know how that kind of business could wreck your life?

And, sure, she had a point to make but thanks very much Mum, by the way. Sorry for wrecking your life, and that. Mum, who would be a millionaire rocket scientist now if I hadn't come along then, right? Mum, who would have invented Microsoft and been prime minister by now if I hadn't come along. Mum, who's bigger than doorways and spends her days dealing with fungus and rum and the heat of summer.

If only Kane hadn't come along and wrecked all those plans that she never got round to having. Kane, who does his best and answers to the call of lust no more than once. And answers to it with Tanika Bell, of all magnificent people.

Forget the lust. I also have the ‘clean thoughts of meaningful attachment', and what about those? Steelo said those were fine, but where's the attachment when Mr Bloody Bell stands in the way, looking at the ground, waiting for you to pass like you're a bad smell and he's downwind and he's had a faceful of you already.

I can do without him in my head. I lean in against the boat, get back to sanding. It's Harbo I'm here for
and it's worth remembering that. This is about getting Harbo sorted out and back in the water.

My father had a boat. The
Stormy
it was called. We had a couple of good years with her. I'd already been around a while and I'm pretty sure Mum's life wasn't wrecked at that stage, despite the version we've been getting lately. We had Wayne too by then, so Mum had lost the downstairs parts but other than that things were hardly wrecked at all. She got a scar from Wayne, and a big one since they had to go in quickly to get him out or to sort out the damage. Something like that. I don't know if I've ever seen it. She always wore a one-piece to the beach from then on, back in the days when she went to the beach.

I can remember a few trips out on the
Stormy
. Dad liked nothing better. The
Stormy
heading out past Point Cartwright was like Christmas morning for him. And Wayne was okay when he was lying-down size, but he was a goner as soon as he grew and got vertical. Wayne threw up so much on the
Stormy
that Dad got him his own permanent bucket and he said that, if he wanted to be a seafaring type, he had to tough it out. But by the time Wayne was four, or maybe not even four, the
Stormy
was gone and Dad was gone and that was that.

I hadn't thought about those days for ages, but Brown's Slipway smells like varnish and paint and
diesel and the sea, and that can only say boats. So to me it says
Stormy
. They were good times.

‘Hey, what's the story?' Wayne says when Mum's in bed and we're watching ‘The Best of the X-Files' summer repeats.

‘Well, a lot of it gets back to what happened to Mulder's sister,' I tell him. ‘Or what might have happened. You see . . .'

‘She was taken by aliens, dickweed. I'm not stupid. What's the X-File on you and Mr Bell's daughter? That's the one they're really talking about.'

‘Who's talking about? Who's been talking to you about that?'

‘No one. No one talks to me. But that doesn't mean I don't listen sometimes. You were sprung up the back of the bus, that's what they reckon. And you might have been nude. And people found out, so . . .'

‘We were not nude.'

‘Oh. You're sure?'

‘Sorry to disappoint you. We were mostly clothed.'

‘Mostly? Then what's the story?'

‘We were showing poor judgement. We answered the call of lust.'

‘Really? Cool.'

‘No, it's . . .'

‘Oh my god. My god. You mean you did it. That's what you mean. Like, “it”. The big “it”. Up the back of the bus. With a girl. That was your answer to the call of lust. Doing it. The call of lust actually said “Kane, do you want to do it?” and you said “yep”.'

‘Yeah, look . . .'

‘What was it like? How did you know how? How did you know how to do it? It's got a few steps to it, hasn't it? You don't just set the ferret on her straight up.'

‘Wayne, this is more than you've spoken the past two years. It can't be good for you to try and get all these words out at once. You'll only hurt yourself.'

‘God. God. Getting in trouble for doing it.'

‘And that ferret talk. I don't know about the company you're keeping . . .'

‘Slung out of the nativity play for doing it. You went and did it in a play that's about the little baby Jesus. And you got slung out. Awesome.'

‘We walked, mate. We walked, as we should have, and then we got slung out. To make it official. And we got the ban on talking to each other until further notice and all of that. They had to send out the right signal and . . .'

‘This is so cool. It's like a movie. A movie from America, 'cause in a lot of European countries you
could still be in the play after that. After doing it. With Tanika Bell . . .' He lets out a big sigh. And why wouldn't he? ‘Tanika Bell . . .' He rolls his eyes and clenches his right hand into a shaky fist. ‘What was it like? How much room is there, like, in a woman? Generally speaking.'

‘Wayne . . .'

‘How about that? All that practice by yourself downstairs in your hammock at night, and finally . . .'

‘Yeah, righto. You know, I think this is “The X-Files” episode where some really ugly alien penetrates your dreams and rips you in half trying to get out of you. Rips you open like a zipper with its razor sharp claws, and your guts just pour out like lumps of fresh roadkill. Like a bag full of dead cats. Slopping all over the floor like chunks of whales sliced up by big Japanese knives. But it won't happen unless you fall asleep, of course, Wayne.'

Wayne shuts up. Shuts up and his eyes bulge and his upper lip gets quivery and it's like there's a big lump of something pushing up against his throat from down inside. But something more like tea than like an alien.

‘Kane, I'm bad with that stuff,' he says eventually. ‘You know I've got a very active imagination. It's in one of my school reports, in the maths bit. You've seen it in writing, you bastard.' There's a scratching sound
above us, a possum running over the roof. Bad timing. ‘What's that noise? That noise outside?'

‘Dunno. Could be the alien, ripping a few sleepy possums apart for practice. Or maybe it's not. I guess we'll see. Those of us who dare to fall asleep tonight.'

‘Now wait a second. With “The X-Files”  . . .' Wayne's getting a bit wobbly with the talking now . . . ‘with “The X-Files” when there's that light and they come to get you . . .'

‘Wayne, remember I said we could only watch the show if we didn't have to have the talk about aliens again.'

‘Yeah, but what if, like, really truly . . .'

‘Okay, Wayne. There are no aliens. Or if there are, they're basically grey and peaceful and kind of globular in the head and just here to check a few things out.'

‘Kane, even the quiet aliens take your temperature using your butt. I'm not stupid.'

‘There are no aliens. I made up that stuff with the ripping and your dreams. You were doing that breathing that gives you a turn, so I had to slow you down a bit. Now, back on the subject of the other thing, I knew we'd get to it some day, and maybe this is the day. To start with, the question of room and the female parts. Let me just say first, man to man and in a respectful way, it's not like you're rattling a sausage around in a lunch box . . .'

I don't know where to begin with Wayne and sex, but I figure I've got to start off mechanical to get his attention. Well get nowhere with a lecture on ‘clean thoughts of meaningful attachment'. I can't tell him that, with Tanika Bell, it's not just about the bit where you roll your eyes back and get shaky. It's about the two of you taking in the night sky, shutting everything else out for a while, shutting out all the crap in the world. It's about the minutes or even seconds when there's no one else, and she gives you one of those looks that no one else gets. And she says just a few words that will get you through the crap, and that's what it's about.

With the first coat, the wood soaks up the paint and makes it look like a bad job – makes the
Stella Maris
look patchy and us look like the amateurs we are.

It's hot and I stink and my legs itch from the grass from Whipper Snippering for the council. There's been some rain lately and the grass has gone mad, meaning lots of cutting and lots of seeds, and the seeds tunnel down into your socks and bug you all day.

Some days, I just want Harbo's boat finished. And I want these people to treat me better and talk to me like they used to. There's fornication all over this coast,
and plenty of people keep right on doing it. I've done the right thing since Christmas, and they should give me a break.

‘Tanika – you know, Joe Bell's daughter,' Harbo says to me on his next inspection tour, and I think I'm in trouble. I think some of my sins of thought might have become sins of word while I wasn't concentrating. ‘She was saying she thought she'd hang back a while this evening and do some more of the other side. Not that I'm trying to push you into staying, but she reckoned she'd get her dad to drop all the others off and then come back for her. And maybe you if you were up for it, but . . .' Not trouble at all. The opposite of trouble. ‘Anyway, there'll be a second run happening. For the two of you if you aren't doing anything. If you don't have plans.'

‘Just painting plans.'

‘Well, if that's . . .'

‘Harbo, is there no one else you can yack to? I'm a busy man. Someone's got to give this baby a second coat.'

He laughs and says, ‘Good on you,' and I keep pushing the brush along the timber, focusing on the job and not the turn things are taking.

Tanika Bell. Tanika Bell and me working on the boat, and practically no one else around. If we worked all night till it was finished, maybe we could just push it into the water and leave. Cruise the high seas.

‘I should have brought beer,' he says. ‘I should have brought a cold beer or two to pass up to you right now.'

‘Hey, I'm on the job. You can buy me as many beers as you like when we've got you back in the water.'

‘I'll tell Tanika you'll be staying then?'

‘Sure. Actually, it'd be good if you could tell Mr Bell when he gets here with the bus. It's, you know, a passenger issue.'

‘No worries.'

No worries at all.

Mr Bell gets here right on time and Harbo meets him at the gate. I dunk the brush in the paint again and slide it along the wood. I paint like a quiet machine, I look like a worker, I think only of Tanika Bell. The sun's getting low but it's still hot on the back of my shirt and the sweat's running down my chest. The second coat looks better than the first. This time the timber stays white and looks painted.

Towards the front the boat narrows, and Tanika's somewhere just over there on the other side, working away in the shade, loading up her brush with white paint and doing plank after plank. Like me.

I can imagine just how she looks right now, trying to keep her hair out of her face and getting flecks of paint in it, blowing it out of her eyes the way I've seen her do, tucking it out of the way but it doesn't stay.
I know her from watching her, not recently but last year. I suspect I remember more about Tanika Bell than they think I do, and this isn't over.

Mr Bell goes round the back of the boat, with a look on his face that lets me know why they call the back part the ‘stern'. There'll be talk going on round there. I keep painting, taking the new white paint right to the top of the hull where the blue trim's going to go. I keep painting and looking straight ahead at the timber, as if it's the only thing on my mind.

‘Kane.' It's Mr Bell, back already. But he hasn't said my name in a while – that's what takes me by surprise. ‘Kane, just clarifying this evening's movements.'

‘Sure, Mr Bell.'

I turn around and he's looking up at me with the sun glinting from his sweaty head. He's got his hand up to his face and he's squinting, even though the sun's behind him. It's the white paint that's making him do it. The glare of the sunlight from the white paint.

‘You see the difference with the second coat?' I figure a comment related to the job could be a good choice. ‘The wood just soaks the first one right up, so I thought I'd stay on and do some of the second. At least give myself some sense of accomplishment.'