This is a selection of Danny Furlong's short stories. They are all available for free download. Just click on the link at the end of each story.
The Mad Woman's Sister.
I’ve been wandering around this country town knocking on doors all day trying to talk people into changing their telephone carrier. qThere’s five of us scattered around town doing this. We were all hired at university to sell people a new and better phone service. I need money bad and yesterday was the last of my third year exams, so here I am with the others. This morning they brought us here to do Castlemaine. Tomorrow it’s Maryborough, Daylesford the next day then Kyneton and Heathcote, then a full week up in Bendigo with its sixty thousand people. Me a salesman? Imagine that if you can! Me, Phillip Computer Nerd Jones … a salesman? That’s about as likely as a woman being elected the next Pope! But that’s what I am today. A salesman. Not a very good salesman, mind you, but a salesman nonetheless. I wasn’t a salesman yesterday and they probably won’t have me back tomorrow, not after my woeful record today. I’ve made just one sale and one fairly definite maybe. At lunchtime the five of us all got together for sandwiches in the park. Beccy had made five sales by then and so had Grahme. Peter had seven and then there was Roger. Frigging tall and handsome smarmy law student Roger in his frigging Gucci suit or whatever designer label he’s wearing today! He had eleven sales on his clipboard and I had just the one! No wonder I don’t get on with him, the smarmy bastard! I’m no salesman. I don’t even like people all that much! Not face to face, anyway. I don’t mind it when I’m on the net in an anonymous chat room talking to someone thousands of kilometres away in Hicksville, Ohio or Smirnoffski, Siberia. I can even talk to girls then without getting all tongue-tied and gawky.
On a computer you’ve got time to think before you blab out something stupid. I’m only doing this because of Mum. I still haven’t paid her the money she loaned me a couple of months ago to upgrade my computer. Its a fantastic piece of technology now. Its about thousand dozen times faster than it was and its got memory to burn.I was going to get a part time job to pay Mum, but I started developing this new computer prediction system to plot four dimensional time lines for the next generation of intergalactic space-craft. I’ve been spending my every spare moment on it, but Mum put her foot down and made me take this job. I’ve wasted the whole afternoon wandering around town not even trying to sell Optus. It’s nearly time to meet up in the park with the others. There’s a row of units about fifty metres down from the park. I’ve done a terrible job so far, but I’ll give it one last try before I finish for the day. I’ll try this unit here, the one with the young girl outside with her baby.
“Um, excuse me? Ummm, can I ask you something?”
“Yeeeeees?”
God, I always do this! Why didn’t I just come straight out and say what I wanted? Now she probably thinks I’m some sort of weirdo who wants weirdo sex with her baby or something.
“Um …umm, is there anyone inside?”
“Yes! … My dad!”
Hell, Phillip! Now you’ve really got her worried! It’s like you’re trying to find out if it’s safe to drag her inside to shag her silly!
“Ummm, can I speak to someone, please?”
“Sure! Just come in!”
“Ahhhh, I’ll wait out here, thanks.”
She’s opening the front door.
“No, it’s OK. You can come in.”
I can see an older guy in a wheelchair inside. It’s probably her father. No, I don’t want this! Being a salesman for a couple of weeks is one thing, but conning old handicapped guys into changing phone companies? No. No, I’m not up for that! I won’t go in with her, but I can’t just turn and walk away either. Typical me, I’m sort of rooted to the spot outside the front door wondering what to do next.
“Hello. I’m Shaniekta. Do you want something?”
Shaniekta? Shaniekta??? What sort of name is that? The girl was about seventeen. If this woman is her mum she must be about thirty eight. With a name like Shaniekta she’s probably a left-over hippy … free love and all that … some hippy guy probably got her up the duff when she was just sixteen. The girl could be younger than seventeen, I suppose … that’d make this one a bit over thirty … about ten years older than me. She’s still a good-looker, considering her age …
“Excuse me, Fella!!! I said do you want something?”
God, she’s snappy! Probably got two or three younger kids raising hell inside and her husband’s in a wheelchair.
“Ummm, no … no. I was going to … ummm … but then I saw the man in the wheelchair … he’s ummm … he’s …”
“Yes, he’s disabled! He’s my partner! But what do you want?”
“I ummm … Do you own this house?”
“No. We rent it. Why?”
Why? I don’t know why, do I? I’m just babbling again! She’s a woman and I’ve broken out in a sweat again and I said the first thing I could think of!
“I’m sorry. Ummm, I’m … ummm … I’m …”
Hell, did she just do that??? She karate-chopped the palm of her other hand to let me know she means business!
“Listen Mate … You need to sharpen up your people skills! I don’t think you’re for real!”
I pity her poor kids.
“I … I … I am! I, um … I work for Optus! There’s five of us in the area signing people up! Ummmm, look at my clipboard … there’s someone I signed up today!”
I’m so flustered I’m sweating like a pig. I must stink like hell by now, especially seeing I started sweating the instant I spoke to that girl with the baby before. The opposite sex always do that to me.
“Optus? Where’s your I.D?”
Hell, that’s the problem! She thinks I’m up to no good because I didn’t show her any identification! They told us to wear it always, but I feel like a dork walking around wearing an Optus badge with my name on it … Oh shiiiiit, I’m stuffed now! I’m fumbling in my pocket, but the bloody badge is gone!
“Listen Mate, all the other units along this street are old people. I think you’re checking them out so you can come back and rob them.”
“No. No. I do work for … ummm …”
I’m backing away from her verbal attacks.
“Listen Mate …”
I’m still backing away.
“Not Listen Mate again, please. She never follows with anything nice.
“Listen Mate … I don’t believe you! I don’t think you’re legit! I’m going to call the cops!”
I’ve turned around and I’m walking away along the footpath. Now I’m running! I’m going to get my Optus badge. I know where it is. I was showing it to Beccy at lunchtime, because it’s a shoddy photocopied thing. I was saying to her that anyone could make one. What am I doing? That Shaniekta woman back there got me so flustered I just ran off without a word. I’m getting my badge for her, but she’ll think I’m running away! I better go back and tell her what I’m doing. No, hang on … why on earth would I want to talk to her ever again? She’s bad news! So what if she calls the cops? She’s the one will have the red face. Not me. Anyway … I’m at the park now and I can see my bloody badge under the table over there. I’ll sit there and catch my breath. The others should be back any time now. Hell, what’s that squeal of brakes? Oh, no! That crazy woman is chasing after me in her car! I’ll give her my badge to have a good look at. That should shut her up once and for all.
“Um, here! Um, see? I do work for, um …”
“This doesn’t look right! I apologize if I’m wrong, but I’m taking this to the police. If you’re legit you’ll get it back in ten minutes!” Here they come! Two police cars are screaming to a halt outside the park. Four cops pile out and are running towards me.
“Hey, you! Stay where you are!”
They’ve got me up against a tree in the park spreading ‘em while one of them searches me and turns out my pockets. They’re all talking at once and so is that Shaniekta woman. One of them is throwing questions at me, the biggest one is prodding me in the side while he barks in my face that I’m a junkie casing out places to come back and turn over, and to top it all off bloody smarmy Roger and the rest of our lot have just turned up and are watching my humiliation! Roger switches into law student mode in an instant and starts firing questions at the youngest cop. Because of his Gucci suit and his confident manner he gets clear and deferential answers and he sets everything right in a flash.
“Phil? Phil a druggie casing out joints to do over later?” he says in mock amazement, throwing an arm around my shoulders. “He’s one of us … aren’t you, Phil? He’s a legitimate employee of Optus Communications conducting legitimate Optus business. His technique mightn’t be too hot, but to be fair this is his first day. I’ll give him a few pointers tonight and by tomorrow in Maryborough he’ll be as right as rain!”
Maryborough tomorrow? No way! I’m catching a train home tonight! I’m going to spend the rest of my life sitting in front of my computer in my bedroom and I’m never setting foot outside again! You never know but that mad Shaniekta woman might have a sister out here somewhere!
Click here for a free download of The Mad Woman’s Sister
The Electrician.
This is a true story. Friends were fixing up the cafe in Anglesea. The electrician, Mark, competent confident but gentle likeable guy, just stopped coming. He rang a week later to say he couldn't come back, because there'd been a death in the family.
"I'm sorry, Mark."
"I'm OK - it was a beautiful death. I'll send Jane to finish the job.She's my cousin."
Jane turns up the next day driving a Porshe. She looks exactly like Mark, she talks exactly like him, and she's dressed exactly like him - this isn't amazing, because she IS him! But 'she's' very under-confident, and she's a lousy electrician. In fact the people have to hire another electrician to finish the job. They explain to the new electrician why the job's half done.
"Oh, I get a few jobs like this every time Mark dies!" he replies. "It's a phase he's going through!"
No download for The Electrician
Pooncarie,
Bill Retallick was having a heart attack outside the Pooncarie hall. He was leaning against our van, clawing at his chest and struggling to get a breath. Zoe was standing there beside him trying to grab his arm to take his pulse.
“Are you crazy, Zoe?” I shouted from inside the van. “You said yourself the man’s having a heart attack! He needs the air ambulance to Broken Hill! He definitely doesn’t need you to check he’s still alive while he’s gearing up to die right before our very eyes!”
Actually, that’s what I wanted to shout, but I didn’t. I didn’t even whisper it to her so he couldn’t hear. I just sat there watching him dying. I do that a lot. Not sitting there watching Bill dying, but just sitting there watching things in general. I’m in a wheelchair, you see. I can’t move much. I can’t talk either. Not any more. Not since the stroke that put me here. Sitting and watching is pretty high on the list of my ‘can do’ things. That day Bill was having his heart attack we were back in Pooncarie after going out to Lake Mungo. We were on a camping trip up to Broken Hill. We hadn’t reached there yet, but that was OK. We weren’t in any hurry. This was Shaniekta’s first trip into the outback and I wanted it to be more than just a mad rush from town to town. ‘Camp more and travel less’ is my motto at times like this. The first week of our trip was spent taking our time getting as far as Pooncarie and camping there by the Darling river. Normally Shaniekta is a girl who always has to be doing something but she was enjoying my relaxed, no hurry, style of camping. Zoe was enjoying it too, but deep down she was itching to get to Broken Hill. Her parents are both artists and she’s well on the way to becoming a serious artist herself. When Shaniekta and I offered her the opportunity to come on this trip as my part-time carer and as our full-time friend she jumped at the chance. It had long been a dream of hers to visit Broken Hill for the art galleries and the light and the colours and the inspiration it would surely give her.
"Look at that sign" she'd said as we reached the outskirts of Pooncarie the other day. "Welcome to Pooncarie. Population eighty-four.”
This tiny town of eighty-four people has tennis courts, a cricket oval, a golf course, a horse racing track, an equipped airfield, an ambulance, four filtered water drinking fountains down by the river in the camping area, a resident Wentworth Council worker to exclusively maintain the town’s services, amenities and facilities and, would you believe, a disabled toilet in the public amenities block! Our home town is Castlemaine in Victoria, population seven thousand. It and many a town around Australia still haven’t fully grasped the thirty year old concept that disabled people deserve a fair go, but tiny Pooncarie has a disabled toilet in its amenities block. All it needs now is disabled shower facilities and it’ll have it made. When we arrived at Pooncarie the first time we camped down by the river about a kilometre from the public amenities block down there. The amenities were dusty with a few cobwebs from non-use, but they were otherwise clean with no graffiti and no vandalism damage. Pooncarie isn’t the campers’ Mecca at that time of year. We were probably the first lot to use the camping amenities block in a couple of months. We met Robert, the Pooncarie council man, there on our first morning. We had driven there from our camp further along the river to get a shower and we arrived as he did.
"G'day."
We were alone down by the river, but in a small community like Pooncarie nothing goes unnoticed. Robert had come down to give the block the once-over to freshen it up for us. He was a nice bloke, friendly and welcoming, but he was a bit thrown at first by my situation. Like many a person when they first strike me, he could follow me when I typed just a few words on my laptop communicator, but he got lost when I typed a full sentence. That isn’t a reflection on his intelligence or on the other people’s intelligence. It’s just that in a sort of way some people’s minds go into shock for a while when they’re hit with me … and with good reason too! I mean, how often do you meet a wheelchair-bound mute quadriplegic in your life??? What do you say to him? Can he understand what’s going on? How simple should you make your talking to him? Hell, should you even take any notice of him at all or just ignore him to save everyone embarrassment??? Who knows??? It’s never easy when people are confronted by an unknown. If you think how much you know about mute quads it’s a fair bet that our situation is nearly as unknown to you as little green men from Mars. At times I unintentionally make it even harder for people to come to terms with me. I’ve been like this for so long that I take it for granted. I don’t think to ease people into my situation. I know from years of experience that many people’s first reaction upon seeing me is to think something like “Oh, the poor man! It must be so terrible for him!” But it’s not terrible for me. It’s fine. I’ve got a good life! Hell, I’ve got a great life! I’ve lived this mute quad crap for so long it’s no big deal to me anymore. It’s the way things were for me yesterday, it’s the way things are for me today and it’s the way things will be for me for the rest of my life. I accepted that a long time ago and set about creating a good and happy life for myself. I must have done a pretty good job of it, because now I’m content and I’m very happy. A few months ago Shaniekta and I had arranged to meet a woman at one of Castlemaine’s coffee shops. She had answered my advertisement for another part-time carer. It was Zoe, actually. The coffee shop was crowded for Castlemaine … about a dozen people. We had never met Zoe. I told Shaniekta I was worried that she wouldn’t know which table to come to.
“Ah, Danny … ” Shaniekta said to me, “the wheelchair?”
Much of the time I forget I’m different to everyone else. People have the idea that being a mute quad must be a terrible life, an unhappy life, a miserable life … and instead they strike me. They are unnerved anyway by being confronted with the unknown and then they get completely thrown. They’re thinking “Oh, the poor man!”, but they’re hit by someone who acts as if he is normal and who is anything but a “poor man!” That happened to Robert the council guy.
We needed to rest up. We had arrived in Pooncarie pretty exhausted after driving the five hundred kilometres from Castlemaine in only four days, so we idled the time away by the river for two or three days. We sustained this rigorous pace for the whole trip, doing seventeen hundred kilometres in twenty one days. That’s an average of just over eighty kilometres a day! Shaniekta was always eating or sleeping or peeing throughout the hot days at Pooncarie. She did a bit of reading and writing too. Zoe was drawing and painting quite a bit and they both went swimming in the warm river from time to time.
“I don’t know if my bathers will still fit over my fat belly” Shaniekta told Zoe. “I can’t stop putting on weight.”
“Bathers? You’ve got bathers?” Zoe replied. “I haven’t worn bathers in my entire life! Not even as a kid!”
Of course she hadn’t. Her parents were arty hippy types with weird ideas about treating kids like real people. (They probably smoked dope too!))
“You don’t need bathers out here. It’s alright to swim in the nude. There’s no-one around for miles.” Zoe added. “Don’t worry about your shape. Danny and I think its fine.”
Swim in the nude? Shaniekta wasn’t so sure about that. She had never swum in the nude in her life. She told us that when she was growing up in Holland everyone went topless at the beach, (I hope there was an age limit) but this was different, she said.
“I’m not sure I’d feel right in front of you now” she told Zoe. “My boobs have always been big, but now I’m putting on weight hand over fist and they’re huge”.
(I remember her telling me how she felt awkward last year when her closest girlfriend saw her in the bathroom half dressed with just a bra up top. I can’t imagine her not wearing a top on a public beach in Holland. But with the breasts she had back then I can’t see those Dutch boys being anything but veeeery complimentary about them.She’s funny about showing too much of her body in public. Me, I’ve always liked her in short skirts and tight or ‘revealing’ tee-shirts and blouses. She’s got a great body. Give them a hint and make them drool, I say. I wonder what a psychiatrist would say about that? Probably that I’m a typical male wanting to bolster my typical male ego by flaunting her sexiness.
“Cop an eyeful of this, Boys! Isn’t she great? And she’s with me! It shows how terrific I am myself to attract someone as hot as her!”)
Anyway, down at the river at Pooncarie she finally said she feels really comfortable around Zoe and me now and she knows we aren’t going to make any judgements about her fat belly or her really big boobs. After that she and Zoe often got their gear off and had a great time in the water while I sat up the top of the steep river bank watching. Watching them and cursing because there was no way they could get me down to the water with them. During their first dip they were too busy enjoying the water to notice the two pelicans that floated around the bend about five hundred metres upstream. The current was minimal at that time of year, so they were on the bank and half dressed before the graceful birds drifted by. Graceful? Graceful and beautiful is closer to the truth. Cleopatra herself would have been at home sailing the Nile in these birds’ likenesses. At home and unjealously aware that her beauty had been matched!
Once we were rested and revived from the initial driving effort to get to Pooncarie we decided to drive out to the Lake Mungo national park. It was only seventy kilometres away. We counted on an easy one hour drive before lunch, but we arrived there hot and frazzled and buggered in the middle of the afternoon after three long, hot, bone-shaking hours! The unmade road would have been fine for a Caterpillar-tracked bulldozer. A bulldozer wouldn’t have noticed the kilometre after kilometre of corrugations. A fifty thousand dollar air-conditioned 4-wheel-drive could probably cruise along at a hundred kilometres per hour with little more than low suspension drumming noise to compete with Mantovani on the six-stack CD player. But we didn’t have a bulldozer and we didn’t have a new 4WD. We were in a twenty two year old Toyota HiAce van that shuddered and rattled no matter what speed we went. Occasionally we’d hit a smooth sandy stretch of road and we’d fly along at sixty kilometres per hour, but most of the time the corrugations shook all shit out of the van and out of us at just twenty or thirty!
There wasn’t any water out at the lake. We were there in the wrong season for water. It had dried up in the Palentolgy season or the Jurassic Park season or some such season a few million years ago. There were just deserty bushes as far as the eye could see and some fossilized fish bones and a few Aboriginal artifacts and one randy park ranger. His name was Colin. I think of him as Come On Col. He was friendly and attentive and helpful the way a park ranger ought to be, but within two seconds of nodding hello to me his attention was fixed firmly and forever on the two ‘girls’ – particularly Shaniekta.
I wasn’t very impressed that he was coming on to her with me sitting right behind her in the van, but there was a reason for that. Once some people register the fact that I can’t move and can’t talk they are incapable of conceiving that I’m an intelligent being with just as much vitality and presence as real people – with more in many cases. Never in a million years would Come On Col have been able to get his head around Shaniekta being head over heels in love with me or with her having a fuller and more satisfying life with me than with any other man she has ever known. (At least that’s what she tells me. But she’d be crazy not to say that to the man of her life, wouldn’t she?)
Shaniekta and Zoe deflected the randy ranger’s overtures to avoid any bad feeling through a blunt “Get lost, Col”, but he tried again after work when he was in civvies and a stubby of Vic Bitter. He didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell anyway, but his half-drunk mates in his car shouting “How about a party, Love?” didn’t help his cause very much. Just before sunset we drove the thirteen kilometre track across the lake to the sandy cliffs that the local Chinese cattle station workers of a century ago named as the Walls of China. Neil Armstrong would’ve called that area the Sea of Tranquillity. Once we were there Zoe removed my sandals and the footplates of my wheelchair so I could feel the sands of the moonscape with the soft soles of my feet – white sands sifted fine and soft when water filled that moon-lake not long after the Dreamtime.
We got out of Mungo first thing the next morning because the day was on the way to getting as hot as Hades. Driving back to Pooncarie was no different to the drive out, except that for the last twenty or thirty kilometres the fuel gauge was on Empty and there was a strange new clunking sound coming from under the front of the van. We were just about out of petrol and we were hot and tired and stressed out and dying for something to eat. It’s no wonder we were more than a bit relieved to make it to the petrol pumps at the small Pooncarie general store. Shaniekta was going to fill the van, but I insisted we to get out and have some lunch first. And doing that led to Bill Retallick’s heart attack. Good one, Danny! Before we filled up we drove about a hundred metres further along the main street to park in the shade in front of the Pooncarie hall. Shaniekta and Zoe unloaded most of the camping gear there so I could reverse out of the van. We settled down for our normal two hour lunch of home-made salad sandwiches and fruit juice and a good rest (van-made sandwiches, actually) when Bill drove past in his green Ford pickup. With all our gear scattered around outside the van he thought we were having car trouble. He came back to check if we needed help. We didn’t.
“Nice little town you’ve got here” Zoe said to him.
“I think so” he replied. “I moved here for my health. I needed the easy life I’ve got here.”
We talked a bit more then he told us where to find a tap for drinking water and went on his way. Little did any of us know that he’d be back here pushing our van within an hour or two and that’d bring on a heart attack. That’s what happened, though. When we were ready to move on after our lunch break I drove up the ramps into the van, the gear went in behind me, and then the bloody van wouldn’t start! It was out of petrol. Zoe walked to the pumps at the general store, but they didn’t have a jerry can. Luckily (or unluckily) Bill drove up and Zoe asked if he had a can to loan us buy a bit of petrol. He did one better than that – he produced a full eight litre can and tipped it into our empty petrol tank, but he wouldn’t take anything for it.
Shaniekta tried the van, but it wouldn’t start. She tried so much she looked like flattening the battery. Bill and Zoe tried to push-start it, but the back wheels were stuck in a rut in the ground. They stepped back to survey the situation then Bill dived straight back into it without a word. He strained his guts out trying to get the van to move, but the only thing that happened was that he started having a heart attack. He staggered against the van, clawing at his chest and struggling to get a breath. Zoe stood there beside him trying to grab his arm to take his pulse.
“Are you crazy, Zoe?” I shouted silently from inside the van. “He doesn’t need you to check he’s still alive while he’s gearing up to die! He needs the air ambulance to Broken Hill!”
“I’m … puff … puff … I’m alright” whispered Bill breathlessly. “This happens … puff … all the time. … I just … puff … need to rest for a minute.”
“I moved here for my health, for the easy life” he had told us earlier.
What he hadn’t told us was that if he did anything strenuous he could cark it! The lady at the store gave Shaniekta s that bit of information the next day.
“I’ll … puff … just sit here” he gasped slightly less as he sat against a gumtree. “I just … puff … need to rest for a minute. This happens all the time.”
We watched him anxiously. Without seconds he was much improved. He wasn’t going to die on us after all.
A road repair truck appeared out of nowhere and Shaniekta asked the two council workers in it to give us a push. They were out of the truck and pushing the van before she finished talking. They had it out of the rut and rolling forward in no time flat.
“Stop! Shaniekta shouted. “Please wait till I’m in the driver’s seat! There’s no-one in there except Danny … and he’s in the back in a wheelchair!”
After the council guys push-started the van they were in their truck and gone before Shaniekta could thank them. Bill was just about back to his normal self. He climbed into his pickup and drove off with a wave, so we drove back to the pumps at the store and filled up with petrol.
“Is there somewhere I can check the tyres?” Shaniekta asked, looking everywhere for the air hose.
“Sorry, Love. You’ll have to go to the garage for that. We’ve only got petrol here.”
Garage? What garage? In tiny Pooncarie we could hardly have missed seeing a seven acres of concrete, a dozen green and gold self-serve pumps and a green and gold shop that sold everything from Snickers bars to briquettes – and engine oil on the side.
“Not that sort of garage, Love! It’s over there!”
Across the street and down a few houses there was a nondescript shed set back from the road. The door was shut. A rusty forty four gallon drum and an old engine lying in the grass at the side of the shed were the only hints that it had to do with anything mechanical. No, wait! Etched across the top of the shed in faded paint were the words ‘Pooncarie Garage’
“It looks shut.”
“It is, Love, it is! Just go to the house next door and get Frank.”
Frank took his time. He was a gentle, sardonic bloke dressed in shorts and thongs and the kind of suntan you get from working off and on in the outback sun – dark-tanned all over but for the lily-white skin from the ankles down from your working boots. He opened up the garage for us and checked the tyres with no fuss and no rush.
“How much do we owe you?”
He shook his head with a gentle, sardonic smile and questioned that we had ample petrol and water and a spare wheel for the Menindee road. We did.
“It’s dangerous out there!” he said. “I’m always being called out to rescue people who don’t look after themselves! … Have you got any cold water to drink? For right now, I mean. It’s getting hot!”
He wandered back to his house and returned with a large bottle of ice-cold water from his freezer.
“Can we pay you for this?” Shaniekta asked, wrapping the treasure in a towel.
Once again he shook his head with his gentle, sardonic smile and said “Just be careful out there! Too many people treat it like a Sunday drive! Six people died from no water last year. Four out here and two in South Australia.”
Shaniekta told me later that she saw the warning signs then. We were meant to meet Frank. It was meant to be. We were meant to take notice of him and be careful.
“Um” she said to Frank. “There is one thing. There’s a strange knocking sound coming from under the driver’s seat.”
“From the front end?” he asked her.
“Um, I suppose so. It wasn’t there before we went on the Mungo road.”
Frank checked under the car. It was bad news.
“Look at these bolts” he said to Shaniekta and Zoe. “They’ve snapped off clean from where the spring …”
“Tell Danny” Shaniekta interrupted, pointing to me still sitting in the back of the van. “He knows about those things.”
Frank turned and looked me in the eye. He spoke to me without the slightest hesitation, completely at home with waiting for me to type on my communicator and reading my answers.That is how it should be always, but the fact that I comment on it indicates how unusual it is. When Shaniekta is present most new people talk almost exclusively to her and ask her what I’m thinking or feeling or wanting. Especially the men.
“Ask Danny. He can talk for himself.”
They do speak directly to me then, sometimes simply, clearly and over-loudly as if I’m deaf or retarded, but it’s not uncommon for some of them to soon revert to Shaniekta-talking. Men seem to have a harder time talking to me than women do. Not all men, mind you … this is just a generalization. I remember going to my first and last Commando reunion about ten years ago. Here was a roomful of old army mates with whom I had risked death a hundred times, but for most of the night only a handful of them approached me. The rest of them avoided me like the plague with some of them religiously not looking my way after an initial surreptitious glance or two. We had all been gung ho, macho dare-devils with the attitude that ‘It’ll never happen to us.’ But there I was right before their eyes, seemingly no good to anyone, and that disturbed them. Their own mortality and vulnerability really hit home for probably the first time in their lives. I wasn’t just a name in a conversation or a line in a newspaper. I was real. I was their mate and I was sitting right there! If it could happen to one of their mad mates it could happen to them.That’s the way it is for many men, but it wasn’t that way with Frank. He showed me the broken bolts and described how they came from the top double arm thing behind the wheel … (He couldn’t think of its name.)
“Upper wishbone bolts” I typed, making a half-stab in the dark.
“Yes, that’s it!” exclaimed Frank. “I had a mental block! I’ll replace them, but it’ll take an hour or so. Make yourselves at home over at the house. You can put your stuff in the freezer if you want.”
It took closer to three hours to do the job, because Frank took his time … but he’s like that, isn’t he? We didn’t mind how long it took, though. Zoe carried her sketchbook and paints into the small orchard next door and Shaniekta spent most of the afternoon sleeping on the shady lawn. Me, I just sat and watched Shaniekta. I’m good at that. It was getting late by the time Frank finished the job on the van. He decided that it wasn’t finished until he had spent ages hosing down my badly swollen feet. We only drove down to the cricket ground and had dinner at the under-cover picnic tables. We couldn’t be bothered with all the hassle of finding a camping spot and putting up the tent in the dark, so after dinner we just strung up the mosquito nets and crashed there for the night.
The following morning we moved back to for river. It was another stinking hot day. By lunchtime Shaniekta and Zoe were on the way to heat tiredness and frazzlement, so we adjourned to the air-conditioned pub for the afternoon. Shaniekta reckons the first ice-cold drink that day was the best drink of her life. She says she’ll carry the memory of it to her grave. We forced ourselves back to camp after dinner at the pub, and Robert was waiting there to greet us with some Yellowbelly fish he’d caught that day. We had them for breakfast the next morning (they were bloody lovely) then we left Pooncarie for Menindee, and Broken Hill just a day later.
Did I tell you earlier that she had a fat belly? Ever since the trip began you could just about see it getting fatter and fatter. I loved it! I loved seeing her fat belly and I loved seeing her over-sized breasts. To use her words, they were huge. I loved the way she had to clamour over me at night in the tent, all big and heavy and awkward, so she could go outside for her nine hundred and forty-seventh pee. I loved the way she looked standing there naked on the river bank after a swim, thick and heavy and solid. I loved her fat hard belly pressing into my stomach when we were making love, making everything so difficult. She used to look beautiful before, slim and sexy whether she was dressed or naked, with her little belly and nice big breasts. She looked beautiful at Pooncarie too, with her fat belly and her huge breasts. What was so good about her huge heavy boobs? What was so good about her fat heavy belly? Those boobs were the most obvious signs of a body gearing up to sustain a new life, and that belly was fat and heavy and hard because there was a new life growing in it! Our baby! The new life we had created between us!
“Don’t be awkward or embarrassed about your shape, Shaniekta,” I’d say during her pregnancy. “Be happy and proud of your body! I am! I love it for the job it’s doing. I love it! I love it! I love it!”
I don’t think you should do a beauty comparison on the beauty of a pregnant woman with the way she was beforehand. To my way of thinking there’s beauty in both states, but they’re different beauties that exist in their own right and shouldn’t be compared. The best that comparison can do is to make you conclude that they’re equal states of beauty but that they’re different!
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Emiko and Tanaka
Far back in time emerald dragons lived in the large caves that riddled the rocky mountain that stood at one end of the island of Obihiro; the island was always shrouded in a smoky blanket of fine ash, because a smouldering volcano stood at the other end of it. The long struggle between Emporer Hiroichi and Lord Shigeru Kayano hastened the passing of the last of these wondrous creatures, but when cruel Wizard Saito lived his hermit's life on Obihiro they still dwelt there. Over the years some brave men, and some desperate men, rowed towards the island to try to enjoin the wizard to assist them in their diverse endevours, but Grand Wizard Saito was cruel in the extreme to them. He permitted the dragons to live in the caves on the condition that they guard his solitary island retreat from all intruders. They devoured many of the unfortunate men who tried to reach his home, and the few who got past them suffered agonising deaths at his hands.
Lord Jinkichi Meguro lived not far from Osaka in an opulent palace. The floors of the many rooms were paved with the most beautiful porcelain tiles, - porcelain tiles which had been finely patterned with delicate silver filagree - and throughout the palace there were translucent light-blue porcelain bowls swimming with pure-white waterlilies. Meguro had had an enclosed gazebo built for his wife on the little island in the ornamental lake. Elegant swans glided amongst the multitude of waterlilies that floated on the lake's surface, and large coloured carp searched it's shallow water ceaselessly for food. The beautiful gazebo had walls of ricepaper, and it had a roof of beaten gold. Naoko had spent countless tranquil hours on the island, across the arched footbridge that spanned the waters of the lake. Sweet gentle Naoko. Often she'd just sat and contemplated the slowly moving swans, but each spring she'd used deft brush strokes of black ink to paint the fragrant falling cherry blossoms. Naoka had herself been like the pink blossoms - her season of bloom had been far too short. With the birth of Emiko, her only child, her brief life had wafted away like cherry blossom on the evening breeze.
Emiko had to grow to womanhood without her mother, but with each passing day Lord Meguro saw more and more of his wife in his daughter - her serenity, her sweetness, her beauty. He spared no expense on Emiko's upbringing, and on her education. A large part of her tutoring was aimed at teaching her how to best serve and please her future husband. She loved her father greatly, and she loved him even more for providing her with this knowledge, because she knew that a woman's happiness is best achieved through pleasing her husband. On her eventual wedding night she and her new husband would sleep there, and there he'd pillow her for the very first time.
Wizard Saito was old and bent, but he had it in his mind to have a concubine. He used his wizardry to give him the appearance of a strickingly-handsome young man of noble birth, - long black hair tied up and worn under the crown of his hat, and rich robes decorated with red dragons in full flight - then he strode across the surface of the smooth sea until he reached the Japanese fishing village of Osaka. When Saito reached Meguro's estates he went directly to Lord Meguro to introduce himself as a distinguished young nobleman with large estates just north of Sapporo. His dress and his general bearing bespoke authority and wealth. He flattered and cultivated Meguro throughout the afternoon, so that that older man invited him to stay for the night. The next day he begged Meguro to permit him to court demure Emiko. Meguro was stunned by Saito's badmannered forthrightedness. His first impulse was to deny the young man, and he did just that. The suitor apologised, but he wouldn't be deterred. He mentioned his Samuri father, he spoke about his own present and future ranks, and he hinted at his wealth.
"Honourable Suitor" Meguro assured him. "My humble daughter couldn't attract a more worthy husband than your esteemed self! My house and my family name are truly honoured by your request, but Emiko is not yet fifteen. She is not yet ready for marriage. I urge you to return to press your suit twelve moons hence."
"I shall respect your wishes, Father, but before I leave may I please speak to your daughter? I want her to be fully aware of my existence, and of my eventual intentions."
Meguro agreed to this request, because he could hear the distress in the young man's heart.
Emiko was busily casting bread amongst the waterlilies for the fish and the swans when she noticed the handsome young stranger striding towards her.
"Is this him?" she thought fleetingly, her heart fluttering.
Young maidens were growing up in isolation from the general population all over Japan, and their teenage years revolved in part around preparing them for marriage. Naturally they dreamed of being married to a handsome young man of high birth. Emiko saw such a young man approaching her, and her heart missed a beat. After his very first words to her she began to dislike him, however, and within minutes this dislike was to turn to hatred and loathing.
"Your father said you are to show me around that goldroofed gazebo! Come, Girl - I must rush! Come!"
Emiko was shocked by his impolite behaviour, but she hurried to obey her father's wishes. As soon as they were inside Saito threw her to the floor, and then he pillowed her brutally!
He left the shattered girl sobbing on the inlaid floor, and he returned brazenly to her father.
"Your daughter belongs to me now, Old Man, because I just pillowed her!"
Lord Jinkichi Meguro screamed a shocked command, and his four Samuri guards exploded into the room to attack Saito. The young nobleman instantly became a Samuri himself - a giant Samuri weilding two swords. The intense fight was soon over. All of the guards were dead or dying on the floor before the giant turned back into the young nobleman. Meguro was quaking in fear behind a screen in a corner of the room.Meguro had become an old man while his samuri had been fighting the giant. He'd thought Saito to be one of the spirit monsters of the Underworld.
"Listen well, Old Man, listen well! I'm taking your daughter, and you'll never see her again! Think of her as dead! She will think of you as dead, because dead you soon will be!
As Saito walked out of the room he killed Lord Meguro by casually flicking a knife at his heart, then the bloodied dagger turned into a snake which slithered over the dead guards to follow it's creator.
Emiko's laughter had been a silver stream tinkling over mossy rocks on snowcovered Mt Asahi; her smile had been the lifegiving rays of the sun; her erect body had been the delicate crane that stood in still waters in the grounds of the Emporer's palace. She had been the two hundred year old bonsai that'd had it's roots trimmed and cultivated time after time in the quest for perfection; she had been thousands of perfumed cherry blossoms stirred by a gentle breeze. After Saito had violated her she never laughed so joyously again; she never smiled so radiantly again, and she never stood so straight and proud again.
Saito was evil, and he was a sadist. He had trampled the blossoms underfoot, and he had uprooted the bonsai - and he had derived pleasure from doing it! He had crushed the young girl's inner self by ravishing her. She thought his attack was the worst possible thing that could happen to her in her entire life. Had she even suspected the depraved depths of the sadistic wizard's mind she would have known that far worse things lay ahead for her. He abducted her to Obihiro to have her as his exclusive possession, but he never attempted to improve relations between them. In fact he deliberately antagonised her, and he beat her at the slightest excuse, so that her hatred of him would deepen. It requires great effort for a wizard to maintain a change of form for any length of time, so whenever he returned home to his island Saito reverted to his true form. He was a very old man, but he used his wizardry to keep his desire alive and rampant.
Emiko was a prisoner on Obihiro for over a month, and during that time he pillowed her every single night. Whenever he saw her during the day he reinforced her disgust by molesting her and violating her with his gnarled hands. She was repulsed at having her flowering body handled so obscenely by such a revolting old man, but her feelings of worthlessness weren't due to this alone. Saito derived immense pleasure from destroying her very being. She had been rightly proud of her spotless virtue, and of her inner purity. The old wizard made her feel that she was now filthy, and that now she was unworthy of any ordinary man - his ultimate pleasure lay in bringing about her utter disgust at herself.
The tender girl soon became an abject woman on Obihiro. That any woman with control of her mind could enjoy the old man's violent pillowings was inconceivable, because of their sadistic horror. Emiko never submitted to Saito's lust without a prolonged struggle, so he used his wizard's powers to overcome her. His pillowing was terrible for her every time. She loathed him, and she felt repugance at his clammy touch. He was well aware of that, rejoicing in the knowledge of it. He wanted her to loathe and despise him, and then to respond estatically to his pillowings despite those adverse feelings for him. Moments before he entered her each time he assumed the form of any of a variety of extremely large beast-monsters, making her cry out in pain and in revulsion at being violated by the huge member of a creature that wasn't even remotely human. He revelled in her sobbing expressions of abasement. He worked some wizardry on part of her mind after an eternity of this humiliation, so that while she silently screamed at him to stop the affected part of her mind controlled her lips to beg for more of him! After he'd finished she always felt so disgusted with herself for having enjoyed his atrocities that she'd sob for hours, but that was exactly what he wanted.
Every day she wandered all over the island for as long as he'd permit, in order to avoid his loathsome hands. Of course she dreamt of escape, but she knew that escape was out of the question in reality. There were no boats or rafts on Obihiro, and because of the effects of volcanic eruptions there were no trees to make them from. The island lay in shark-infested waters with Japan well beyond the horizon. It would've been much too dangerous and much too far to try to escape by swimming, even if she'd known how to swim. She tried to run away from Saito initially, but she soon realized that that was impossible; his home was built beside the only fresh water on the island. She hid from him for about five days, but her delerious thirst drove her back to his water. He hammered home his total control of her by sadistically demanding that she beg him to pillow her before he'd permit her to drink. She felt so low at hearing herself pleading with him to do that obsenity that she never repeated her futile escape attempt. He denied her water every time that she returned to him after sunset, so that she learnt to always be back before dark.
Saito's home stood to one side of the fresh water well, and his abundant vegetable garden was on the other side. He forced Emiko to spend each morning drawing water for it, but she didn't dislike this task. Saito kept a hoard of seeds and soil which he'd worked some wizardry on so that they produced the finest fruit and vegetables. The closest Emiko ever came to happiness at Saito's home was when she was forced to work in this prolific vegetable plot. She hurried back to the shelter of Saito's home well before dark one day with a wild storm on her heels. The storm raged for three full days - three full days of Saito's clammy lecherous hands, and three full days of his housebound animal lust. Emiko was greatly relieved to see that the sky was clear on the fourth morning. As she was picking her way along the rocky coast that day she noticed occasional pieces of shattered timber. She immediately began collecting them to make a raft, but she soon realized the futility of her endeavours - every piece of timber had been smashed against the rocks so much that it was all too small. She'd lived in utter despair for thirty seven humiliating days with Saito, and for as many degrading nights - days and nights of utter hopelessness. While she was collecting the broken timber the long-extinguished flame of hope in her heart was rekindled for a brief moment, but the disappointment that followed the revelation of the futility was dreadful. She fell onto the rocks to cry huge tears of final defeat. Eventually she became silent. She had accepted at last that her fate was to continue as the outlet for all of Saito's perversities forever. She usually delayed returning to his home until just before sunset, but that day she decided to go back even though it was only mid- afternoon. Her spirit was broken totally - she was submitting to her awful fate.
The incident with the timber had been just a small thing - a small push perhaps. It may require a dozen peasants using all their effort over a long period of time to push a samuri to a precipice, but once he's struggling to retain his balance on the very edge the slightest nudge from a child will send him to his death. So it was with Emiko. Saito had dealt her mind massive blows each and every night. She'd been teetering on the edge of the precipice, but she'd kept her balance. Those few shards of timber had pushed her over. She would never wander over the island again - it was not her place to oppose the will of the gods by trying to inhibit the wizard's perverted desires. She looked at the rocky shore lingeringly one last time, because she never expected to enjoy it's solitude again - it was then that she saw the stranger's body! He was lying face down amongst the rocks as if he was dead. She hurried to his side, then she rolled him over. He was a young man, far from handsome, and he was barely alive. She dragged him to the base of the nearby cliff, where she made him as comfortable as possible. She washed the wounds he'd sustained in the storm, then she had to leave to endure the night with Saito. Ever since the wizard had deflowered her so brutally at her father's estate she'd walked bowed and bent. From the moment she found the wounded fisherman she began to hold herself slightly more and more erect. This was because her life started to have a worthwhile purpose. She still acknowledged her own baseness, but now another soul depended on her for much more than just depravity. Her patient regained conciousness during the night, and the following morning she smuggled food and water to him. The moment that she told him that he had been driven ashore on The Wizard Saito's island Tanaka knew that if he valued his life he had to hide. The clifface was dotted with caves, so he leaned heavily on Emiko's shoulder while they shuffled into the closest of them. Emiko inspected Tanaka's injuries while he told how he came to be on Obihiro. He was from the growing village of Osaka. The whole fishing fleet had been working well out from the coast when they'd seen the storm on the horizon, so all the small boats had set sail for the safety of their home port. They'd had the harbour in sight when a massive wave had hit them. Five boats had been swamped, but only two of the unlucky fishermen had been rescued. The fleet had made a dash for safety, but Tanaka had come about to search the area one more time. He hadn't found any survivors, but the storm had found him. His tiny vessel had been carried far out to sea. It would surely have gone beyond the limits of the world had not the dreaded Dragon Island been in it's path. The boat had been dashed against the rocks of Obihiro until it had broke up and left Tanaka at the mercy of the angry sea. The next thing he'd remembered was waking during the previous night where Emiko had left him at the base of the cliff.
Saito only ever left his house just before sunset every afternoon, walking to a high headland where he stood and watched the sky until the last dragon had returned for the night. Emiko feared that he might see Tanaka, for then he'd surely harm the young fisherman. She warned Tanaka to stay hidden in the cave until well after dark. There were fourteen dragons, so if he wanted to leave the safety of his cave he had to have first counted fourteen returning dragons. Emiko no longer wandered aimlessly over the island. Every day she brought Tanaka food and water, and then she enjoyed his company until sunset. The second morning he was waiting excitedly for her on the rocky shore, and he led her to a large cave further along the base of the cliff. Against it's rear wall was a jumble of large pieces of driftwood. Emiko felt a gentle breeze stirring in her heart for the first time since she had been brought to the island against her will. The breeze fanned her seemingly-dead embers of hope, her spirit licked by it's flames. She and Tanaka both voiced the same thought:
"We can make a raft!"
Tanaka worked feverishly dragging the most suitable timbers from the pile, and laying them side by side on the sandy floor. Before the day was half finished he'd laid out a complete raft. Complete, except for one major material - there'd been no rope in the pile. The raft wouldn't be any more than just a loose collection of driftwood until it's bleached timbers were lashed together. Each morning for about the next two weeks Emiko smuggled material for lashings from the wizard's house. She dared not try to take any rope in case her theft was discovered. Tanaka had to make do with strips of cloth from the extra kiminos that Emiko took with her on the pretext of washing. The two young people were becoming very close. Their feelings for each other were heightened by their circumstances, and by their joint venture to escape from their common enemy. Emiko unburdened herself of her sorrowful tale to Tanaka, even though she half-expected him to spurn her because of it. Tanaka was a man of the sea. His was the fisherman's solitary life. He spoke very little, but he was a good listener, and a good man.
Emiko hated being pillowed by beastlike Saito, but every time he did it to her she ended up in estatic pleasure. She'd grown to believe that she was as base, depraved, and perverse as him, because she'd never guessed that her pleasure was due to his evil wizardry. She had an overwealming need to share her experiences at his hands, and to share her thoughts and feelings about herself. Any idea of escape soon evaporated in her, because of her absolute belief that she was no longer worthy of anyone except Saito. She cried more and more as she revealed every detail of her nights with Saito. When she'd talked herself out Tanaka took her in his arms. He kissed her tears away as if she were a child, and he told her he saw so much goodness in her that her unnatural responses to Saito's perverse pillowing weren't her own. They had to be the result of the wizard's debauched desires. Tanaka reasoned with so much conviction that she finally conceded the truth of his words. He was tender with her, concerned for her. She was startled to realize that he was in love with her despite everything she had told him. She had no experience to base this realization on, but she just knew it to be true. Sparrows chirped in her soul, and the smile of joy on her face was her first smile since that terrible day with Saito in the gazebo. The young fisherman begged her to become his wife, and she felt so much love flowing back and forth between them that she could barely form the word 'Yes.'
Their raft was nearly finished. Emiko began bringing far more food and water than Tanaka could consume, building up a supply for their escape. She managed to steal some cotton thread and some pins to make fishing lines, and she took a small phial each of Saito's magic soil and magic seeds. She definitely didn't want any reminders of him, but she saw their value to the poor farmers on her father's estate.
They spent their final hours on Obihiro making love. It was the first time that they'd pillowed together, and it was the first time that Emiko had ever experienced lovemaking. Those few hours became more poignant when they realized they might be just hours from their deaths.
Neither of them had thought too deeply about their escape, but they both sensed that the attempt would be fraught with danger. They knew in their hearts that they were almost certain to die. It was likely that Saito would destroy them as they were fleeing on their flimsy raft; or that the dragons would kill them before they were far from Obihiro; or that they'd drift into the unknown at the edge of the world. Had they dwelt on these frightful dangers they might have been tempted to endure the wizard's island forever.
A change had taken place in Saito during the last week or two. He had tired of Emiko at last. His nightly sadism had increased in it's intensity, and Emiko could tell that he'd go so far as to kill her one night very soon. She had to escape with Tanaka immediately! They'd hoped to leave at about midnight, because by that time of night both the dragons and the wizard would be sleeping. Unfortunately, their departure time was dictated by the tide. They had to catch it as it was running out to sea, so that it would carry them far out from the island. At that time low tide was just before dark, so they had to start paddling right on sunset. They had one huge bit of luck. Recently the dragons had begun flying back to their cave-riddled mountain on a course that was further inland. It was unlikely that they'd look into that setting sun, so it was unlikely that they'd see the escaping raft. The desperate couple battled to row out beyond the line of breakers, then they had no choice but to let the tiny craft be taken by the ocean currents. It would have been wasted effort to keep using the makeshift paddles, because they didn't know which heading they had to maintain. The current took them on a slow course along the coast close by the headland Saito used for his nightly lookout. They were dismayed to see him standing on the island, because he couldn't fail to see them too.
They knew they were about to die when they heard him give an angry highpitched scream from the headland. He changed into a large eagle, climbing high into the twilight sky. Tanaka armed himself with one of the driftwood oars, but both he and Emiko knew that this was a futile gesture. The air was filled with the eagle's harsh screaming as it circled above them. The noise became louder and louder and louder as it plummetted towards the raft. The hopeless lovers held each other tightly, awaiting their doom. Saito died that night! A huge dragon that had lost it's way was skimming above the sea when the eagle dived into it. The crash felt like no more than an insect bite to the heavily-scaled dragon, so he swatted the eagle as carelessly as if it was an annoying mosquito. It all happened so quickly Saito had no time to use his magic to defend himself. His crushed eagle's body nearly hit the small raft as it fell into the sea, but the emerald dragon flew on without seeing the craft. The smouldering volcano began to erupt voilently the instant the wizard died, belching lava and smoke, and the whole island settled slowly into the sea. Most of the dragons took to the sky as their caves were flooded with water, but some of them were drowned in their sleep. The sea around the volcano boiled, and the wizard's dark home exploded into flames. Obihiro Island disappeared beneath the waves within a few minutes, and the nine remaining dragons flew towards the edge of the world in search of a new home.
The little raft, with Emiko and Tanaka huddled fearfully, drifted into the stream of a much stronger current, and it was soon far beyond the horizon. Days ran into weeks; the food supplies were rapidly exhausted, so the lovers existed on the occasional fish that Tanaka caught on Emiko's flimsy lines. The meagre amounts of rainwater that they collected during the only storm of the journey kept them alive, barely - they were constantly delerious with thirst. During one of their rare lucid intervals they agreed that it would be much better to drown quickly than to have an agonising death from thirst. They both stood up on the raft to throw themselves into the ocean, hand-in-hand, then Tanaka glimpsed a dark dot on the horizon. They were drifting towards land! He sat down excitedly, taking up the makeshift oars. He rowed as if he were being pursued by demons of the Underworld, and soon he and Emiko were standing unsteadily on dry land.
The whole area was deserted, but Emiko and Tanaka were too weak to venture inland. They remained near the sea because it was their main source of food at first, but eventually the area became their permanant home. Tanaka concentrated on fishing while Emiko farmed the land. She scattered the small phial of Saito's soil over a large area, then she planted all of his seeds. In no time at all her vegatable crops were even more profuse than the wizard's had been. After the first short growing season she collected a large quantity of vegetable seeds, then she and Tanaka settled into a good life. The fishing was good, and the subsequent vegetable crops were good. Emiko's seeds weren't as productive as Saito's, but they still produced well. During their second year a small nomadic tribe wintered near the couple, and Emiko bartered her excess vegetables for one of their cattle. This became an annual ritual, so Emiko's herd grew. After just two years a nomad family decided to settle down to learn a better way of life from Emiko and Tanaka. Each year a few more families followed their lead, and so a farming and fishing village evolved around the two escapers. The nation of Korea grew from these humble beginnings, but Emiko and Tanaka resisted the calls for them to be the new nation's first rulers. They wanted no more than to be together in peace and freedom, which is how they lived and died.
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The Mad Woman's Sister.
I’ve been wandering around this country town knocking on doors all day trying to talk people into changing their telephone carrier. qThere’s five of us scattered around town doing this. We were all hired at university to sell people a new and better phone service. I need money bad and yesterday was the last of my third year exams, so here I am with the others. This morning they brought us here to do Castlemaine. Tomorrow it’s Maryborough, Daylesford the next day then Kyneton and Heathcote, then a full week up in Bendigo with its sixty thousand people. Me a salesman? Imagine that if you can! Me, Phillip Computer Nerd Jones … a salesman? That’s about as likely as a woman being elected the next Pope! But that’s what I am today. A salesman. Not a very good salesman, mind you, but a salesman nonetheless. I wasn’t a salesman yesterday and they probably won’t have me back tomorrow, not after my woeful record today. I’ve made just one sale and one fairly definite maybe. At lunchtime the five of us all got together for sandwiches in the park. Beccy had made five sales by then and so had Grahme. Peter had seven and then there was Roger. Frigging tall and handsome smarmy law student Roger in his frigging Gucci suit or whatever designer label he’s wearing today! He had eleven sales on his clipboard and I had just the one! No wonder I don’t get on with him, the smarmy bastard! I’m no salesman. I don’t even like people all that much! Not face to face, anyway. I don’t mind it when I’m on the net in an anonymous chat room talking to someone thousands of kilometres away in Hicksville, Ohio or Smirnoffski, Siberia. I can even talk to girls then without getting all tongue-tied and gawky.
On a computer you’ve got time to think before you blab out something stupid. I’m only doing this because of Mum. I still haven’t paid her the money she loaned me a couple of months ago to upgrade my computer. Its a fantastic piece of technology now. Its about thousand dozen times faster than it was and its got memory to burn.I was going to get a part time job to pay Mum, but I started developing this new computer prediction system to plot four dimensional time lines for the next generation of intergalactic space-craft. I’ve been spending my every spare moment on it, but Mum put her foot down and made me take this job. I’ve wasted the whole afternoon wandering around town not even trying to sell Optus. It’s nearly time to meet up in the park with the others. There’s a row of units about fifty metres down from the park. I’ve done a terrible job so far, but I’ll give it one last try before I finish for the day. I’ll try this unit here, the one with the young girl outside with her baby.
“Um, excuse me? Ummm, can I ask you something?”
“Yeeeeees?”
God, I always do this! Why didn’t I just come straight out and say what I wanted? Now she probably thinks I’m some sort of weirdo who wants weirdo sex with her baby or something.
“Um …umm, is there anyone inside?”
“Yes! … My dad!”
Hell, Phillip! Now you’ve really got her worried! It’s like you’re trying to find out if it’s safe to drag her inside to shag her silly!
“Ummm, can I speak to someone, please?”
“Sure! Just come in!”
“Ahhhh, I’ll wait out here, thanks.”
She’s opening the front door.
“No, it’s OK. You can come in.”
I can see an older guy in a wheelchair inside. It’s probably her father. No, I don’t want this! Being a salesman for a couple of weeks is one thing, but conning old handicapped guys into changing phone companies? No. No, I’m not up for that! I won’t go in with her, but I can’t just turn and walk away either. Typical me, I’m sort of rooted to the spot outside the front door wondering what to do next.
“Hello. I’m Shaniekta. Do you want something?”
Shaniekta? Shaniekta??? What sort of name is that? The girl was about seventeen. If this woman is her mum she must be about thirty eight. With a name like Shaniekta she’s probably a left-over hippy … free love and all that … some hippy guy probably got her up the duff when she was just sixteen. The girl could be younger than seventeen, I suppose … that’d make this one a bit over thirty … about ten years older than me. She’s still a good-looker, considering her age …
“Excuse me, Fella!!! I said do you want something?”
God, she’s snappy! Probably got two or three younger kids raising hell inside and her husband’s in a wheelchair.
“Ummm, no … no. I was going to … ummm … but then I saw the man in the wheelchair … he’s ummm … he’s …”
“Yes, he’s disabled! He’s my partner! But what do you want?”
“I ummm … Do you own this house?”
“No. We rent it. Why?”
Why? I don’t know why, do I? I’m just babbling again! She’s a woman and I’ve broken out in a sweat again and I said the first thing I could think of!
“I’m sorry. Ummm, I’m … ummm … I’m …”
Hell, did she just do that??? She karate-chopped the palm of her other hand to let me know she means business!
“Listen Mate … You need to sharpen up your people skills! I don’t think you’re for real!”
I pity her poor kids.
“I … I … I am! I, um … I work for Optus! There’s five of us in the area signing people up! Ummmm, look at my clipboard … there’s someone I signed up today!”
I’m so flustered I’m sweating like a pig. I must stink like hell by now, especially seeing I started sweating the instant I spoke to that girl with the baby before. The opposite sex always do that to me.
“Optus? Where’s your I.D?”
Hell, that’s the problem! She thinks I’m up to no good because I didn’t show her any identification! They told us to wear it always, but I feel like a dork walking around wearing an Optus badge with my name on it … Oh shiiiiit, I’m stuffed now! I’m fumbling in my pocket, but the bloody badge is gone!
“Listen Mate, all the other units along this street are old people. I think you’re checking them out so you can come back and rob them.”
“No. No. I do work for … ummm …”
I’m backing away from her verbal attacks.
“Listen Mate …”
I’m still backing away.
“Not Listen Mate again, please. She never follows with anything nice.
“Listen Mate … I don’t believe you! I don’t think you’re legit! I’m going to call the cops!”
I’ve turned around and I’m walking away along the footpath. Now I’m running! I’m going to get my Optus badge. I know where it is. I was showing it to Beccy at lunchtime, because it’s a shoddy photocopied thing. I was saying to her that anyone could make one. What am I doing? That Shaniekta woman back there got me so flustered I just ran off without a word. I’m getting my badge for her, but she’ll think I’m running away! I better go back and tell her what I’m doing. No, hang on … why on earth would I want to talk to her ever again? She’s bad news! So what if she calls the cops? She’s the one will have the red face. Not me. Anyway … I’m at the park now and I can see my bloody badge under the table over there. I’ll sit there and catch my breath. The others should be back any time now. Hell, what’s that squeal of brakes? Oh, no! That crazy woman is chasing after me in her car! I’ll give her my badge to have a good look at. That should shut her up once and for all.
“Um, here! Um, see? I do work for, um …”
“This doesn’t look right! I apologize if I’m wrong, but I’m taking this to the police. If you’re legit you’ll get it back in ten minutes!” Here they come! Two police cars are screaming to a halt outside the park. Four cops pile out and are running towards me.
“Hey, you! Stay where you are!”
They’ve got me up against a tree in the park spreading ‘em while one of them searches me and turns out my pockets. They’re all talking at once and so is that Shaniekta woman. One of them is throwing questions at me, the biggest one is prodding me in the side while he barks in my face that I’m a junkie casing out places to come back and turn over, and to top it all off bloody smarmy Roger and the rest of our lot have just turned up and are watching my humiliation! Roger switches into law student mode in an instant and starts firing questions at the youngest cop. Because of his Gucci suit and his confident manner he gets clear and deferential answers and he sets everything right in a flash.
“Phil? Phil a druggie casing out joints to do over later?” he says in mock amazement, throwing an arm around my shoulders. “He’s one of us … aren’t you, Phil? He’s a legitimate employee of Optus Communications conducting legitimate Optus business. His technique mightn’t be too hot, but to be fair this is his first day. I’ll give him a few pointers tonight and by tomorrow in Maryborough he’ll be as right as rain!”
Maryborough tomorrow? No way! I’m catching a train home tonight! I’m going to spend the rest of my life sitting in front of my computer in my bedroom and I’m never setting foot outside again! You never know but that mad Shaniekta woman might have a sister out here somewhere!
Click here for a free download of The Mad Woman’s Sister
The Electrician.
This is a true story. Friends were fixing up the cafe in Anglesea. The electrician, Mark, competent confident but gentle likeable guy, just stopped coming. He rang a week later to say he couldn't come back, because there'd been a death in the family.
"I'm sorry, Mark."
"I'm OK - it was a beautiful death. I'll send Jane to finish the job.She's my cousin."
Jane turns up the next day driving a Porshe. She looks exactly like Mark, she talks exactly like him, and she's dressed exactly like him - this isn't amazing, because she IS him! But 'she's' very under-confident, and she's a lousy electrician. In fact the people have to hire another electrician to finish the job. They explain to the new electrician why the job's half done.
"Oh, I get a few jobs like this every time Mark dies!" he replies. "It's a phase he's going through!"
No download for The Electrician
Pooncarie,
Bill Retallick was having a heart attack outside the Pooncarie hall. He was leaning against our van, clawing at his chest and struggling to get a breath. Zoe was standing there beside him trying to grab his arm to take his pulse.
“Are you crazy, Zoe?” I shouted from inside the van. “You said yourself the man’s having a heart attack! He needs the air ambulance to Broken Hill! He definitely doesn’t need you to check he’s still alive while he’s gearing up to die right before our very eyes!”
Actually, that’s what I wanted to shout, but I didn’t. I didn’t even whisper it to her so he couldn’t hear. I just sat there watching him dying. I do that a lot. Not sitting there watching Bill dying, but just sitting there watching things in general. I’m in a wheelchair, you see. I can’t move much. I can’t talk either. Not any more. Not since the stroke that put me here. Sitting and watching is pretty high on the list of my ‘can do’ things. That day Bill was having his heart attack we were back in Pooncarie after going out to Lake Mungo. We were on a camping trip up to Broken Hill. We hadn’t reached there yet, but that was OK. We weren’t in any hurry. This was Shaniekta’s first trip into the outback and I wanted it to be more than just a mad rush from town to town. ‘Camp more and travel less’ is my motto at times like this. The first week of our trip was spent taking our time getting as far as Pooncarie and camping there by the Darling river. Normally Shaniekta is a girl who always has to be doing something but she was enjoying my relaxed, no hurry, style of camping. Zoe was enjoying it too, but deep down she was itching to get to Broken Hill. Her parents are both artists and she’s well on the way to becoming a serious artist herself. When Shaniekta and I offered her the opportunity to come on this trip as my part-time carer and as our full-time friend she jumped at the chance. It had long been a dream of hers to visit Broken Hill for the art galleries and the light and the colours and the inspiration it would surely give her.
"Look at that sign" she'd said as we reached the outskirts of Pooncarie the other day. "Welcome to Pooncarie. Population eighty-four.”
This tiny town of eighty-four people has tennis courts, a cricket oval, a golf course, a horse racing track, an equipped airfield, an ambulance, four filtered water drinking fountains down by the river in the camping area, a resident Wentworth Council worker to exclusively maintain the town’s services, amenities and facilities and, would you believe, a disabled toilet in the public amenities block! Our home town is Castlemaine in Victoria, population seven thousand. It and many a town around Australia still haven’t fully grasped the thirty year old concept that disabled people deserve a fair go, but tiny Pooncarie has a disabled toilet in its amenities block. All it needs now is disabled shower facilities and it’ll have it made. When we arrived at Pooncarie the first time we camped down by the river about a kilometre from the public amenities block down there. The amenities were dusty with a few cobwebs from non-use, but they were otherwise clean with no graffiti and no vandalism damage. Pooncarie isn’t the campers’ Mecca at that time of year. We were probably the first lot to use the camping amenities block in a couple of months. We met Robert, the Pooncarie council man, there on our first morning. We had driven there from our camp further along the river to get a shower and we arrived as he did.
"G'day."
We were alone down by the river, but in a small community like Pooncarie nothing goes unnoticed. Robert had come down to give the block the once-over to freshen it up for us. He was a nice bloke, friendly and welcoming, but he was a bit thrown at first by my situation. Like many a person when they first strike me, he could follow me when I typed just a few words on my laptop communicator, but he got lost when I typed a full sentence. That isn’t a reflection on his intelligence or on the other people’s intelligence. It’s just that in a sort of way some people’s minds go into shock for a while when they’re hit with me … and with good reason too! I mean, how often do you meet a wheelchair-bound mute quadriplegic in your life??? What do you say to him? Can he understand what’s going on? How simple should you make your talking to him? Hell, should you even take any notice of him at all or just ignore him to save everyone embarrassment??? Who knows??? It’s never easy when people are confronted by an unknown. If you think how much you know about mute quads it’s a fair bet that our situation is nearly as unknown to you as little green men from Mars. At times I unintentionally make it even harder for people to come to terms with me. I’ve been like this for so long that I take it for granted. I don’t think to ease people into my situation. I know from years of experience that many people’s first reaction upon seeing me is to think something like “Oh, the poor man! It must be so terrible for him!” But it’s not terrible for me. It’s fine. I’ve got a good life! Hell, I’ve got a great life! I’ve lived this mute quad crap for so long it’s no big deal to me anymore. It’s the way things were for me yesterday, it’s the way things are for me today and it’s the way things will be for me for the rest of my life. I accepted that a long time ago and set about creating a good and happy life for myself. I must have done a pretty good job of it, because now I’m content and I’m very happy. A few months ago Shaniekta and I had arranged to meet a woman at one of Castlemaine’s coffee shops. She had answered my advertisement for another part-time carer. It was Zoe, actually. The coffee shop was crowded for Castlemaine … about a dozen people. We had never met Zoe. I told Shaniekta I was worried that she wouldn’t know which table to come to.
“Ah, Danny … ” Shaniekta said to me, “the wheelchair?”
Much of the time I forget I’m different to everyone else. People have the idea that being a mute quad must be a terrible life, an unhappy life, a miserable life … and instead they strike me. They are unnerved anyway by being confronted with the unknown and then they get completely thrown. They’re thinking “Oh, the poor man!”, but they’re hit by someone who acts as if he is normal and who is anything but a “poor man!” That happened to Robert the council guy.
We needed to rest up. We had arrived in Pooncarie pretty exhausted after driving the five hundred kilometres from Castlemaine in only four days, so we idled the time away by the river for two or three days. We sustained this rigorous pace for the whole trip, doing seventeen hundred kilometres in twenty one days. That’s an average of just over eighty kilometres a day! Shaniekta was always eating or sleeping or peeing throughout the hot days at Pooncarie. She did a bit of reading and writing too. Zoe was drawing and painting quite a bit and they both went swimming in the warm river from time to time.
“I don’t know if my bathers will still fit over my fat belly” Shaniekta told Zoe. “I can’t stop putting on weight.”
“Bathers? You’ve got bathers?” Zoe replied. “I haven’t worn bathers in my entire life! Not even as a kid!”
Of course she hadn’t. Her parents were arty hippy types with weird ideas about treating kids like real people. (They probably smoked dope too!))
“You don’t need bathers out here. It’s alright to swim in the nude. There’s no-one around for miles.” Zoe added. “Don’t worry about your shape. Danny and I think its fine.”
Swim in the nude? Shaniekta wasn’t so sure about that. She had never swum in the nude in her life. She told us that when she was growing up in Holland everyone went topless at the beach, (I hope there was an age limit) but this was different, she said.
“I’m not sure I’d feel right in front of you now” she told Zoe. “My boobs have always been big, but now I’m putting on weight hand over fist and they’re huge”.
(I remember her telling me how she felt awkward last year when her closest girlfriend saw her in the bathroom half dressed with just a bra up top. I can’t imagine her not wearing a top on a public beach in Holland. But with the breasts she had back then I can’t see those Dutch boys being anything but veeeery complimentary about them.She’s funny about showing too much of her body in public. Me, I’ve always liked her in short skirts and tight or ‘revealing’ tee-shirts and blouses. She’s got a great body. Give them a hint and make them drool, I say. I wonder what a psychiatrist would say about that? Probably that I’m a typical male wanting to bolster my typical male ego by flaunting her sexiness.
“Cop an eyeful of this, Boys! Isn’t she great? And she’s with me! It shows how terrific I am myself to attract someone as hot as her!”)
Anyway, down at the river at Pooncarie she finally said she feels really comfortable around Zoe and me now and she knows we aren’t going to make any judgements about her fat belly or her really big boobs. After that she and Zoe often got their gear off and had a great time in the water while I sat up the top of the steep river bank watching. Watching them and cursing because there was no way they could get me down to the water with them. During their first dip they were too busy enjoying the water to notice the two pelicans that floated around the bend about five hundred metres upstream. The current was minimal at that time of year, so they were on the bank and half dressed before the graceful birds drifted by. Graceful? Graceful and beautiful is closer to the truth. Cleopatra herself would have been at home sailing the Nile in these birds’ likenesses. At home and unjealously aware that her beauty had been matched!
Once we were rested and revived from the initial driving effort to get to Pooncarie we decided to drive out to the Lake Mungo national park. It was only seventy kilometres away. We counted on an easy one hour drive before lunch, but we arrived there hot and frazzled and buggered in the middle of the afternoon after three long, hot, bone-shaking hours! The unmade road would have been fine for a Caterpillar-tracked bulldozer. A bulldozer wouldn’t have noticed the kilometre after kilometre of corrugations. A fifty thousand dollar air-conditioned 4-wheel-drive could probably cruise along at a hundred kilometres per hour with little more than low suspension drumming noise to compete with Mantovani on the six-stack CD player. But we didn’t have a bulldozer and we didn’t have a new 4WD. We were in a twenty two year old Toyota HiAce van that shuddered and rattled no matter what speed we went. Occasionally we’d hit a smooth sandy stretch of road and we’d fly along at sixty kilometres per hour, but most of the time the corrugations shook all shit out of the van and out of us at just twenty or thirty!
There wasn’t any water out at the lake. We were there in the wrong season for water. It had dried up in the Palentolgy season or the Jurassic Park season or some such season a few million years ago. There were just deserty bushes as far as the eye could see and some fossilized fish bones and a few Aboriginal artifacts and one randy park ranger. His name was Colin. I think of him as Come On Col. He was friendly and attentive and helpful the way a park ranger ought to be, but within two seconds of nodding hello to me his attention was fixed firmly and forever on the two ‘girls’ – particularly Shaniekta.
I wasn’t very impressed that he was coming on to her with me sitting right behind her in the van, but there was a reason for that. Once some people register the fact that I can’t move and can’t talk they are incapable of conceiving that I’m an intelligent being with just as much vitality and presence as real people – with more in many cases. Never in a million years would Come On Col have been able to get his head around Shaniekta being head over heels in love with me or with her having a fuller and more satisfying life with me than with any other man she has ever known. (At least that’s what she tells me. But she’d be crazy not to say that to the man of her life, wouldn’t she?)
Shaniekta and Zoe deflected the randy ranger’s overtures to avoid any bad feeling through a blunt “Get lost, Col”, but he tried again after work when he was in civvies and a stubby of Vic Bitter. He didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell anyway, but his half-drunk mates in his car shouting “How about a party, Love?” didn’t help his cause very much. Just before sunset we drove the thirteen kilometre track across the lake to the sandy cliffs that the local Chinese cattle station workers of a century ago named as the Walls of China. Neil Armstrong would’ve called that area the Sea of Tranquillity. Once we were there Zoe removed my sandals and the footplates of my wheelchair so I could feel the sands of the moonscape with the soft soles of my feet – white sands sifted fine and soft when water filled that moon-lake not long after the Dreamtime.
We got out of Mungo first thing the next morning because the day was on the way to getting as hot as Hades. Driving back to Pooncarie was no different to the drive out, except that for the last twenty or thirty kilometres the fuel gauge was on Empty and there was a strange new clunking sound coming from under the front of the van. We were just about out of petrol and we were hot and tired and stressed out and dying for something to eat. It’s no wonder we were more than a bit relieved to make it to the petrol pumps at the small Pooncarie general store. Shaniekta was going to fill the van, but I insisted we to get out and have some lunch first. And doing that led to Bill Retallick’s heart attack. Good one, Danny! Before we filled up we drove about a hundred metres further along the main street to park in the shade in front of the Pooncarie hall. Shaniekta and Zoe unloaded most of the camping gear there so I could reverse out of the van. We settled down for our normal two hour lunch of home-made salad sandwiches and fruit juice and a good rest (van-made sandwiches, actually) when Bill drove past in his green Ford pickup. With all our gear scattered around outside the van he thought we were having car trouble. He came back to check if we needed help. We didn’t.
“Nice little town you’ve got here” Zoe said to him.
“I think so” he replied. “I moved here for my health. I needed the easy life I’ve got here.”
We talked a bit more then he told us where to find a tap for drinking water and went on his way. Little did any of us know that he’d be back here pushing our van within an hour or two and that’d bring on a heart attack. That’s what happened, though. When we were ready to move on after our lunch break I drove up the ramps into the van, the gear went in behind me, and then the bloody van wouldn’t start! It was out of petrol. Zoe walked to the pumps at the general store, but they didn’t have a jerry can. Luckily (or unluckily) Bill drove up and Zoe asked if he had a can to loan us buy a bit of petrol. He did one better than that – he produced a full eight litre can and tipped it into our empty petrol tank, but he wouldn’t take anything for it.
Shaniekta tried the van, but it wouldn’t start. She tried so much she looked like flattening the battery. Bill and Zoe tried to push-start it, but the back wheels were stuck in a rut in the ground. They stepped back to survey the situation then Bill dived straight back into it without a word. He strained his guts out trying to get the van to move, but the only thing that happened was that he started having a heart attack. He staggered against the van, clawing at his chest and struggling to get a breath. Zoe stood there beside him trying to grab his arm to take his pulse.
“Are you crazy, Zoe?” I shouted silently from inside the van. “He doesn’t need you to check he’s still alive while he’s gearing up to die! He needs the air ambulance to Broken Hill!”
“I’m … puff … puff … I’m alright” whispered Bill breathlessly. “This happens … puff … all the time. … I just … puff … need to rest for a minute.”
“I moved here for my health, for the easy life” he had told us earlier.
What he hadn’t told us was that if he did anything strenuous he could cark it! The lady at the store gave Shaniekta s that bit of information the next day.
“I’ll … puff … just sit here” he gasped slightly less as he sat against a gumtree. “I just … puff … need to rest for a minute. This happens all the time.”
We watched him anxiously. Without seconds he was much improved. He wasn’t going to die on us after all.
A road repair truck appeared out of nowhere and Shaniekta asked the two council workers in it to give us a push. They were out of the truck and pushing the van before she finished talking. They had it out of the rut and rolling forward in no time flat.
“Stop! Shaniekta shouted. “Please wait till I’m in the driver’s seat! There’s no-one in there except Danny … and he’s in the back in a wheelchair!”
After the council guys push-started the van they were in their truck and gone before Shaniekta could thank them. Bill was just about back to his normal self. He climbed into his pickup and drove off with a wave, so we drove back to the pumps at the store and filled up with petrol.
“Is there somewhere I can check the tyres?” Shaniekta asked, looking everywhere for the air hose.
“Sorry, Love. You’ll have to go to the garage for that. We’ve only got petrol here.”
Garage? What garage? In tiny Pooncarie we could hardly have missed seeing a seven acres of concrete, a dozen green and gold self-serve pumps and a green and gold shop that sold everything from Snickers bars to briquettes – and engine oil on the side.
“Not that sort of garage, Love! It’s over there!”
Across the street and down a few houses there was a nondescript shed set back from the road. The door was shut. A rusty forty four gallon drum and an old engine lying in the grass at the side of the shed were the only hints that it had to do with anything mechanical. No, wait! Etched across the top of the shed in faded paint were the words ‘Pooncarie Garage’
“It looks shut.”
“It is, Love, it is! Just go to the house next door and get Frank.”
Frank took his time. He was a gentle, sardonic bloke dressed in shorts and thongs and the kind of suntan you get from working off and on in the outback sun – dark-tanned all over but for the lily-white skin from the ankles down from your working boots. He opened up the garage for us and checked the tyres with no fuss and no rush.
“How much do we owe you?”
He shook his head with a gentle, sardonic smile and questioned that we had ample petrol and water and a spare wheel for the Menindee road. We did.
“It’s dangerous out there!” he said. “I’m always being called out to rescue people who don’t look after themselves! … Have you got any cold water to drink? For right now, I mean. It’s getting hot!”
He wandered back to his house and returned with a large bottle of ice-cold water from his freezer.
“Can we pay you for this?” Shaniekta asked, wrapping the treasure in a towel.
Once again he shook his head with his gentle, sardonic smile and said “Just be careful out there! Too many people treat it like a Sunday drive! Six people died from no water last year. Four out here and two in South Australia.”
Shaniekta told me later that she saw the warning signs then. We were meant to meet Frank. It was meant to be. We were meant to take notice of him and be careful.
“Um” she said to Frank. “There is one thing. There’s a strange knocking sound coming from under the driver’s seat.”
“From the front end?” he asked her.
“Um, I suppose so. It wasn’t there before we went on the Mungo road.”
Frank checked under the car. It was bad news.
“Look at these bolts” he said to Shaniekta and Zoe. “They’ve snapped off clean from where the spring …”
“Tell Danny” Shaniekta interrupted, pointing to me still sitting in the back of the van. “He knows about those things.”
Frank turned and looked me in the eye. He spoke to me without the slightest hesitation, completely at home with waiting for me to type on my communicator and reading my answers.That is how it should be always, but the fact that I comment on it indicates how unusual it is. When Shaniekta is present most new people talk almost exclusively to her and ask her what I’m thinking or feeling or wanting. Especially the men.
“Ask Danny. He can talk for himself.”
They do speak directly to me then, sometimes simply, clearly and over-loudly as if I’m deaf or retarded, but it’s not uncommon for some of them to soon revert to Shaniekta-talking. Men seem to have a harder time talking to me than women do. Not all men, mind you … this is just a generalization. I remember going to my first and last Commando reunion about ten years ago. Here was a roomful of old army mates with whom I had risked death a hundred times, but for most of the night only a handful of them approached me. The rest of them avoided me like the plague with some of them religiously not looking my way after an initial surreptitious glance or two. We had all been gung ho, macho dare-devils with the attitude that ‘It’ll never happen to us.’ But there I was right before their eyes, seemingly no good to anyone, and that disturbed them. Their own mortality and vulnerability really hit home for probably the first time in their lives. I wasn’t just a name in a conversation or a line in a newspaper. I was real. I was their mate and I was sitting right there! If it could happen to one of their mad mates it could happen to them.That’s the way it is for many men, but it wasn’t that way with Frank. He showed me the broken bolts and described how they came from the top double arm thing behind the wheel … (He couldn’t think of its name.)
“Upper wishbone bolts” I typed, making a half-stab in the dark.
“Yes, that’s it!” exclaimed Frank. “I had a mental block! I’ll replace them, but it’ll take an hour or so. Make yourselves at home over at the house. You can put your stuff in the freezer if you want.”
It took closer to three hours to do the job, because Frank took his time … but he’s like that, isn’t he? We didn’t mind how long it took, though. Zoe carried her sketchbook and paints into the small orchard next door and Shaniekta spent most of the afternoon sleeping on the shady lawn. Me, I just sat and watched Shaniekta. I’m good at that. It was getting late by the time Frank finished the job on the van. He decided that it wasn’t finished until he had spent ages hosing down my badly swollen feet. We only drove down to the cricket ground and had dinner at the under-cover picnic tables. We couldn’t be bothered with all the hassle of finding a camping spot and putting up the tent in the dark, so after dinner we just strung up the mosquito nets and crashed there for the night.
The following morning we moved back to for river. It was another stinking hot day. By lunchtime Shaniekta and Zoe were on the way to heat tiredness and frazzlement, so we adjourned to the air-conditioned pub for the afternoon. Shaniekta reckons the first ice-cold drink that day was the best drink of her life. She says she’ll carry the memory of it to her grave. We forced ourselves back to camp after dinner at the pub, and Robert was waiting there to greet us with some Yellowbelly fish he’d caught that day. We had them for breakfast the next morning (they were bloody lovely) then we left Pooncarie for Menindee, and Broken Hill just a day later.
Did I tell you earlier that she had a fat belly? Ever since the trip began you could just about see it getting fatter and fatter. I loved it! I loved seeing her fat belly and I loved seeing her over-sized breasts. To use her words, they were huge. I loved the way she had to clamour over me at night in the tent, all big and heavy and awkward, so she could go outside for her nine hundred and forty-seventh pee. I loved the way she looked standing there naked on the river bank after a swim, thick and heavy and solid. I loved her fat hard belly pressing into my stomach when we were making love, making everything so difficult. She used to look beautiful before, slim and sexy whether she was dressed or naked, with her little belly and nice big breasts. She looked beautiful at Pooncarie too, with her fat belly and her huge breasts. What was so good about her huge heavy boobs? What was so good about her fat heavy belly? Those boobs were the most obvious signs of a body gearing up to sustain a new life, and that belly was fat and heavy and hard because there was a new life growing in it! Our baby! The new life we had created between us!
“Don’t be awkward or embarrassed about your shape, Shaniekta,” I’d say during her pregnancy. “Be happy and proud of your body! I am! I love it for the job it’s doing. I love it! I love it! I love it!”
I don’t think you should do a beauty comparison on the beauty of a pregnant woman with the way she was beforehand. To my way of thinking there’s beauty in both states, but they’re different beauties that exist in their own right and shouldn’t be compared. The best that comparison can do is to make you conclude that they’re equal states of beauty but that they’re different!
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Emiko and Tanaka
Far back in time emerald dragons lived in the large caves that riddled the rocky mountain that stood at one end of the island of Obihiro; the island was always shrouded in a smoky blanket of fine ash, because a smouldering volcano stood at the other end of it. The long struggle between Emporer Hiroichi and Lord Shigeru Kayano hastened the passing of the last of these wondrous creatures, but when cruel Wizard Saito lived his hermit's life on Obihiro they still dwelt there. Over the years some brave men, and some desperate men, rowed towards the island to try to enjoin the wizard to assist them in their diverse endevours, but Grand Wizard Saito was cruel in the extreme to them. He permitted the dragons to live in the caves on the condition that they guard his solitary island retreat from all intruders. They devoured many of the unfortunate men who tried to reach his home, and the few who got past them suffered agonising deaths at his hands.
Lord Jinkichi Meguro lived not far from Osaka in an opulent palace. The floors of the many rooms were paved with the most beautiful porcelain tiles, - porcelain tiles which had been finely patterned with delicate silver filagree - and throughout the palace there were translucent light-blue porcelain bowls swimming with pure-white waterlilies. Meguro had had an enclosed gazebo built for his wife on the little island in the ornamental lake. Elegant swans glided amongst the multitude of waterlilies that floated on the lake's surface, and large coloured carp searched it's shallow water ceaselessly for food. The beautiful gazebo had walls of ricepaper, and it had a roof of beaten gold. Naoko had spent countless tranquil hours on the island, across the arched footbridge that spanned the waters of the lake. Sweet gentle Naoko. Often she'd just sat and contemplated the slowly moving swans, but each spring she'd used deft brush strokes of black ink to paint the fragrant falling cherry blossoms. Naoka had herself been like the pink blossoms - her season of bloom had been far too short. With the birth of Emiko, her only child, her brief life had wafted away like cherry blossom on the evening breeze.
Emiko had to grow to womanhood without her mother, but with each passing day Lord Meguro saw more and more of his wife in his daughter - her serenity, her sweetness, her beauty. He spared no expense on Emiko's upbringing, and on her education. A large part of her tutoring was aimed at teaching her how to best serve and please her future husband. She loved her father greatly, and she loved him even more for providing her with this knowledge, because she knew that a woman's happiness is best achieved through pleasing her husband. On her eventual wedding night she and her new husband would sleep there, and there he'd pillow her for the very first time.
Wizard Saito was old and bent, but he had it in his mind to have a concubine. He used his wizardry to give him the appearance of a strickingly-handsome young man of noble birth, - long black hair tied up and worn under the crown of his hat, and rich robes decorated with red dragons in full flight - then he strode across the surface of the smooth sea until he reached the Japanese fishing village of Osaka. When Saito reached Meguro's estates he went directly to Lord Meguro to introduce himself as a distinguished young nobleman with large estates just north of Sapporo. His dress and his general bearing bespoke authority and wealth. He flattered and cultivated Meguro throughout the afternoon, so that that older man invited him to stay for the night. The next day he begged Meguro to permit him to court demure Emiko. Meguro was stunned by Saito's badmannered forthrightedness. His first impulse was to deny the young man, and he did just that. The suitor apologised, but he wouldn't be deterred. He mentioned his Samuri father, he spoke about his own present and future ranks, and he hinted at his wealth.
"Honourable Suitor" Meguro assured him. "My humble daughter couldn't attract a more worthy husband than your esteemed self! My house and my family name are truly honoured by your request, but Emiko is not yet fifteen. She is not yet ready for marriage. I urge you to return to press your suit twelve moons hence."
"I shall respect your wishes, Father, but before I leave may I please speak to your daughter? I want her to be fully aware of my existence, and of my eventual intentions."
Meguro agreed to this request, because he could hear the distress in the young man's heart.
Emiko was busily casting bread amongst the waterlilies for the fish and the swans when she noticed the handsome young stranger striding towards her.
"Is this him?" she thought fleetingly, her heart fluttering.
Young maidens were growing up in isolation from the general population all over Japan, and their teenage years revolved in part around preparing them for marriage. Naturally they dreamed of being married to a handsome young man of high birth. Emiko saw such a young man approaching her, and her heart missed a beat. After his very first words to her she began to dislike him, however, and within minutes this dislike was to turn to hatred and loathing.
"Your father said you are to show me around that goldroofed gazebo! Come, Girl - I must rush! Come!"
Emiko was shocked by his impolite behaviour, but she hurried to obey her father's wishes. As soon as they were inside Saito threw her to the floor, and then he pillowed her brutally!
He left the shattered girl sobbing on the inlaid floor, and he returned brazenly to her father.
"Your daughter belongs to me now, Old Man, because I just pillowed her!"
Lord Jinkichi Meguro screamed a shocked command, and his four Samuri guards exploded into the room to attack Saito. The young nobleman instantly became a Samuri himself - a giant Samuri weilding two swords. The intense fight was soon over. All of the guards were dead or dying on the floor before the giant turned back into the young nobleman. Meguro was quaking in fear behind a screen in a corner of the room.Meguro had become an old man while his samuri had been fighting the giant. He'd thought Saito to be one of the spirit monsters of the Underworld.
"Listen well, Old Man, listen well! I'm taking your daughter, and you'll never see her again! Think of her as dead! She will think of you as dead, because dead you soon will be!
As Saito walked out of the room he killed Lord Meguro by casually flicking a knife at his heart, then the bloodied dagger turned into a snake which slithered over the dead guards to follow it's creator.
Emiko's laughter had been a silver stream tinkling over mossy rocks on snowcovered Mt Asahi; her smile had been the lifegiving rays of the sun; her erect body had been the delicate crane that stood in still waters in the grounds of the Emporer's palace. She had been the two hundred year old bonsai that'd had it's roots trimmed and cultivated time after time in the quest for perfection; she had been thousands of perfumed cherry blossoms stirred by a gentle breeze. After Saito had violated her she never laughed so joyously again; she never smiled so radiantly again, and she never stood so straight and proud again.
Saito was evil, and he was a sadist. He had trampled the blossoms underfoot, and he had uprooted the bonsai - and he had derived pleasure from doing it! He had crushed the young girl's inner self by ravishing her. She thought his attack was the worst possible thing that could happen to her in her entire life. Had she even suspected the depraved depths of the sadistic wizard's mind she would have known that far worse things lay ahead for her. He abducted her to Obihiro to have her as his exclusive possession, but he never attempted to improve relations between them. In fact he deliberately antagonised her, and he beat her at the slightest excuse, so that her hatred of him would deepen. It requires great effort for a wizard to maintain a change of form for any length of time, so whenever he returned home to his island Saito reverted to his true form. He was a very old man, but he used his wizardry to keep his desire alive and rampant.
Emiko was a prisoner on Obihiro for over a month, and during that time he pillowed her every single night. Whenever he saw her during the day he reinforced her disgust by molesting her and violating her with his gnarled hands. She was repulsed at having her flowering body handled so obscenely by such a revolting old man, but her feelings of worthlessness weren't due to this alone. Saito derived immense pleasure from destroying her very being. She had been rightly proud of her spotless virtue, and of her inner purity. The old wizard made her feel that she was now filthy, and that now she was unworthy of any ordinary man - his ultimate pleasure lay in bringing about her utter disgust at herself.
The tender girl soon became an abject woman on Obihiro. That any woman with control of her mind could enjoy the old man's violent pillowings was inconceivable, because of their sadistic horror. Emiko never submitted to Saito's lust without a prolonged struggle, so he used his wizard's powers to overcome her. His pillowing was terrible for her every time. She loathed him, and she felt repugance at his clammy touch. He was well aware of that, rejoicing in the knowledge of it. He wanted her to loathe and despise him, and then to respond estatically to his pillowings despite those adverse feelings for him. Moments before he entered her each time he assumed the form of any of a variety of extremely large beast-monsters, making her cry out in pain and in revulsion at being violated by the huge member of a creature that wasn't even remotely human. He revelled in her sobbing expressions of abasement. He worked some wizardry on part of her mind after an eternity of this humiliation, so that while she silently screamed at him to stop the affected part of her mind controlled her lips to beg for more of him! After he'd finished she always felt so disgusted with herself for having enjoyed his atrocities that she'd sob for hours, but that was exactly what he wanted.
Every day she wandered all over the island for as long as he'd permit, in order to avoid his loathsome hands. Of course she dreamt of escape, but she knew that escape was out of the question in reality. There were no boats or rafts on Obihiro, and because of the effects of volcanic eruptions there were no trees to make them from. The island lay in shark-infested waters with Japan well beyond the horizon. It would've been much too dangerous and much too far to try to escape by swimming, even if she'd known how to swim. She tried to run away from Saito initially, but she soon realized that that was impossible; his home was built beside the only fresh water on the island. She hid from him for about five days, but her delerious thirst drove her back to his water. He hammered home his total control of her by sadistically demanding that she beg him to pillow her before he'd permit her to drink. She felt so low at hearing herself pleading with him to do that obsenity that she never repeated her futile escape attempt. He denied her water every time that she returned to him after sunset, so that she learnt to always be back before dark.
Saito's home stood to one side of the fresh water well, and his abundant vegetable garden was on the other side. He forced Emiko to spend each morning drawing water for it, but she didn't dislike this task. Saito kept a hoard of seeds and soil which he'd worked some wizardry on so that they produced the finest fruit and vegetables. The closest Emiko ever came to happiness at Saito's home was when she was forced to work in this prolific vegetable plot. She hurried back to the shelter of Saito's home well before dark one day with a wild storm on her heels. The storm raged for three full days - three full days of Saito's clammy lecherous hands, and three full days of his housebound animal lust. Emiko was greatly relieved to see that the sky was clear on the fourth morning. As she was picking her way along the rocky coast that day she noticed occasional pieces of shattered timber. She immediately began collecting them to make a raft, but she soon realized the futility of her endeavours - every piece of timber had been smashed against the rocks so much that it was all too small. She'd lived in utter despair for thirty seven humiliating days with Saito, and for as many degrading nights - days and nights of utter hopelessness. While she was collecting the broken timber the long-extinguished flame of hope in her heart was rekindled for a brief moment, but the disappointment that followed the revelation of the futility was dreadful. She fell onto the rocks to cry huge tears of final defeat. Eventually she became silent. She had accepted at last that her fate was to continue as the outlet for all of Saito's perversities forever. She usually delayed returning to his home until just before sunset, but that day she decided to go back even though it was only mid- afternoon. Her spirit was broken totally - she was submitting to her awful fate.
The incident with the timber had been just a small thing - a small push perhaps. It may require a dozen peasants using all their effort over a long period of time to push a samuri to a precipice, but once he's struggling to retain his balance on the very edge the slightest nudge from a child will send him to his death. So it was with Emiko. Saito had dealt her mind massive blows each and every night. She'd been teetering on the edge of the precipice, but she'd kept her balance. Those few shards of timber had pushed her over. She would never wander over the island again - it was not her place to oppose the will of the gods by trying to inhibit the wizard's perverted desires. She looked at the rocky shore lingeringly one last time, because she never expected to enjoy it's solitude again - it was then that she saw the stranger's body! He was lying face down amongst the rocks as if he was dead. She hurried to his side, then she rolled him over. He was a young man, far from handsome, and he was barely alive. She dragged him to the base of the nearby cliff, where she made him as comfortable as possible. She washed the wounds he'd sustained in the storm, then she had to leave to endure the night with Saito. Ever since the wizard had deflowered her so brutally at her father's estate she'd walked bowed and bent. From the moment she found the wounded fisherman she began to hold herself slightly more and more erect. This was because her life started to have a worthwhile purpose. She still acknowledged her own baseness, but now another soul depended on her for much more than just depravity. Her patient regained conciousness during the night, and the following morning she smuggled food and water to him. The moment that she told him that he had been driven ashore on The Wizard Saito's island Tanaka knew that if he valued his life he had to hide. The clifface was dotted with caves, so he leaned heavily on Emiko's shoulder while they shuffled into the closest of them. Emiko inspected Tanaka's injuries while he told how he came to be on Obihiro. He was from the growing village of Osaka. The whole fishing fleet had been working well out from the coast when they'd seen the storm on the horizon, so all the small boats had set sail for the safety of their home port. They'd had the harbour in sight when a massive wave had hit them. Five boats had been swamped, but only two of the unlucky fishermen had been rescued. The fleet had made a dash for safety, but Tanaka had come about to search the area one more time. He hadn't found any survivors, but the storm had found him. His tiny vessel had been carried far out to sea. It would surely have gone beyond the limits of the world had not the dreaded Dragon Island been in it's path. The boat had been dashed against the rocks of Obihiro until it had broke up and left Tanaka at the mercy of the angry sea. The next thing he'd remembered was waking during the previous night where Emiko had left him at the base of the cliff.
Saito only ever left his house just before sunset every afternoon, walking to a high headland where he stood and watched the sky until the last dragon had returned for the night. Emiko feared that he might see Tanaka, for then he'd surely harm the young fisherman. She warned Tanaka to stay hidden in the cave until well after dark. There were fourteen dragons, so if he wanted to leave the safety of his cave he had to have first counted fourteen returning dragons. Emiko no longer wandered aimlessly over the island. Every day she brought Tanaka food and water, and then she enjoyed his company until sunset. The second morning he was waiting excitedly for her on the rocky shore, and he led her to a large cave further along the base of the cliff. Against it's rear wall was a jumble of large pieces of driftwood. Emiko felt a gentle breeze stirring in her heart for the first time since she had been brought to the island against her will. The breeze fanned her seemingly-dead embers of hope, her spirit licked by it's flames. She and Tanaka both voiced the same thought:
"We can make a raft!"
Tanaka worked feverishly dragging the most suitable timbers from the pile, and laying them side by side on the sandy floor. Before the day was half finished he'd laid out a complete raft. Complete, except for one major material - there'd been no rope in the pile. The raft wouldn't be any more than just a loose collection of driftwood until it's bleached timbers were lashed together. Each morning for about the next two weeks Emiko smuggled material for lashings from the wizard's house. She dared not try to take any rope in case her theft was discovered. Tanaka had to make do with strips of cloth from the extra kiminos that Emiko took with her on the pretext of washing. The two young people were becoming very close. Their feelings for each other were heightened by their circumstances, and by their joint venture to escape from their common enemy. Emiko unburdened herself of her sorrowful tale to Tanaka, even though she half-expected him to spurn her because of it. Tanaka was a man of the sea. His was the fisherman's solitary life. He spoke very little, but he was a good listener, and a good man.
Emiko hated being pillowed by beastlike Saito, but every time he did it to her she ended up in estatic pleasure. She'd grown to believe that she was as base, depraved, and perverse as him, because she'd never guessed that her pleasure was due to his evil wizardry. She had an overwealming need to share her experiences at his hands, and to share her thoughts and feelings about herself. Any idea of escape soon evaporated in her, because of her absolute belief that she was no longer worthy of anyone except Saito. She cried more and more as she revealed every detail of her nights with Saito. When she'd talked herself out Tanaka took her in his arms. He kissed her tears away as if she were a child, and he told her he saw so much goodness in her that her unnatural responses to Saito's perverse pillowing weren't her own. They had to be the result of the wizard's debauched desires. Tanaka reasoned with so much conviction that she finally conceded the truth of his words. He was tender with her, concerned for her. She was startled to realize that he was in love with her despite everything she had told him. She had no experience to base this realization on, but she just knew it to be true. Sparrows chirped in her soul, and the smile of joy on her face was her first smile since that terrible day with Saito in the gazebo. The young fisherman begged her to become his wife, and she felt so much love flowing back and forth between them that she could barely form the word 'Yes.'
Their raft was nearly finished. Emiko began bringing far more food and water than Tanaka could consume, building up a supply for their escape. She managed to steal some cotton thread and some pins to make fishing lines, and she took a small phial each of Saito's magic soil and magic seeds. She definitely didn't want any reminders of him, but she saw their value to the poor farmers on her father's estate.
They spent their final hours on Obihiro making love. It was the first time that they'd pillowed together, and it was the first time that Emiko had ever experienced lovemaking. Those few hours became more poignant when they realized they might be just hours from their deaths.
Neither of them had thought too deeply about their escape, but they both sensed that the attempt would be fraught with danger. They knew in their hearts that they were almost certain to die. It was likely that Saito would destroy them as they were fleeing on their flimsy raft; or that the dragons would kill them before they were far from Obihiro; or that they'd drift into the unknown at the edge of the world. Had they dwelt on these frightful dangers they might have been tempted to endure the wizard's island forever.
A change had taken place in Saito during the last week or two. He had tired of Emiko at last. His nightly sadism had increased in it's intensity, and Emiko could tell that he'd go so far as to kill her one night very soon. She had to escape with Tanaka immediately! They'd hoped to leave at about midnight, because by that time of night both the dragons and the wizard would be sleeping. Unfortunately, their departure time was dictated by the tide. They had to catch it as it was running out to sea, so that it would carry them far out from the island. At that time low tide was just before dark, so they had to start paddling right on sunset. They had one huge bit of luck. Recently the dragons had begun flying back to their cave-riddled mountain on a course that was further inland. It was unlikely that they'd look into that setting sun, so it was unlikely that they'd see the escaping raft. The desperate couple battled to row out beyond the line of breakers, then they had no choice but to let the tiny craft be taken by the ocean currents. It would have been wasted effort to keep using the makeshift paddles, because they didn't know which heading they had to maintain. The current took them on a slow course along the coast close by the headland Saito used for his nightly lookout. They were dismayed to see him standing on the island, because he couldn't fail to see them too.
They knew they were about to die when they heard him give an angry highpitched scream from the headland. He changed into a large eagle, climbing high into the twilight sky. Tanaka armed himself with one of the driftwood oars, but both he and Emiko knew that this was a futile gesture. The air was filled with the eagle's harsh screaming as it circled above them. The noise became louder and louder and louder as it plummetted towards the raft. The hopeless lovers held each other tightly, awaiting their doom. Saito died that night! A huge dragon that had lost it's way was skimming above the sea when the eagle dived into it. The crash felt like no more than an insect bite to the heavily-scaled dragon, so he swatted the eagle as carelessly as if it was an annoying mosquito. It all happened so quickly Saito had no time to use his magic to defend himself. His crushed eagle's body nearly hit the small raft as it fell into the sea, but the emerald dragon flew on without seeing the craft. The smouldering volcano began to erupt voilently the instant the wizard died, belching lava and smoke, and the whole island settled slowly into the sea. Most of the dragons took to the sky as their caves were flooded with water, but some of them were drowned in their sleep. The sea around the volcano boiled, and the wizard's dark home exploded into flames. Obihiro Island disappeared beneath the waves within a few minutes, and the nine remaining dragons flew towards the edge of the world in search of a new home.
The little raft, with Emiko and Tanaka huddled fearfully, drifted into the stream of a much stronger current, and it was soon far beyond the horizon. Days ran into weeks; the food supplies were rapidly exhausted, so the lovers existed on the occasional fish that Tanaka caught on Emiko's flimsy lines. The meagre amounts of rainwater that they collected during the only storm of the journey kept them alive, barely - they were constantly delerious with thirst. During one of their rare lucid intervals they agreed that it would be much better to drown quickly than to have an agonising death from thirst. They both stood up on the raft to throw themselves into the ocean, hand-in-hand, then Tanaka glimpsed a dark dot on the horizon. They were drifting towards land! He sat down excitedly, taking up the makeshift oars. He rowed as if he were being pursued by demons of the Underworld, and soon he and Emiko were standing unsteadily on dry land.
The whole area was deserted, but Emiko and Tanaka were too weak to venture inland. They remained near the sea because it was their main source of food at first, but eventually the area became their permanant home. Tanaka concentrated on fishing while Emiko farmed the land. She scattered the small phial of Saito's soil over a large area, then she planted all of his seeds. In no time at all her vegatable crops were even more profuse than the wizard's had been. After the first short growing season she collected a large quantity of vegetable seeds, then she and Tanaka settled into a good life. The fishing was good, and the subsequent vegetable crops were good. Emiko's seeds weren't as productive as Saito's, but they still produced well. During their second year a small nomadic tribe wintered near the couple, and Emiko bartered her excess vegetables for one of their cattle. This became an annual ritual, so Emiko's herd grew. After just two years a nomad family decided to settle down to learn a better way of life from Emiko and Tanaka. Each year a few more families followed their lead, and so a farming and fishing village evolved around the two escapers. The nation of Korea grew from these humble beginnings, but Emiko and Tanaka resisted the calls for them to be the new nation's first rulers. They wanted no more than to be together in peace and freedom, which is how they lived and died.
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