Hard Water

The word

we used

was mellowed

 

and maybe he really had

towards the end—

but Victor took the jug cord

 

to the boys for years. For half a life he whirred

like a rowing machine. Barb said she heard

the grunts of effort between the strokes from her yard

 

across the creek; and that her bloke, Steady Brad,

as he was known before the brainbleed,

once wondered

 

why that effing forklift driver couldn’t just unload,

until he clocked the ruckus was coming from inside

the mullet-stinking, guano-spattered

 

weatherboard,

two or three abandoned

Holdens further up the No Through Road.

 

Noosa Shane—the only Shane I know who’s still loaded

now the boom has ended—

was skiing at Banksia Beach, when the semi-muffled

 

thuds that echoed

off the gazebo and along the promenade

spooked him, and he flooded

 

his flashy Suzuki four-stroke outboard.

Then there’s Carol, who sometimes sleeps in the hide

in the wetlands. She reckoned

 

some native bird

responded

to the hurt in the wind

 

by clattering its own head

about the mud.

But Carol’s also had it hard.

 

Chook, Buddha, Wayne, Stink and Rod

rarely conferred,

and even when they did they talked

 

around it: Rod sailed closest when he recalled

Vic’s trawler in dry dock at Spinnaker Sound

that night a big fist of south, upward

 

of sixty knots, shunted

it leeward,

free from its chucks, and they found

 

the boat tilted

on its port side

in its cradle, with its outriggers totalled…

 

All agreed the eldest bore the brunt. Kind kid,

Jason. Before he could speak, he ferried

turtle hatchlings on a raft of cast-off chipboard,

 

bridging his back against a frigate bird—

but the knock-off crowd

at Bluey’s twelve years later barely blinked

 

up from their schooners when Vic cranked

up What a Wonderful World

on the jukebox and cracked

 

his firstborn square in the jaw with the dartboard.

He told me once that every time he flinched

his eyes would shut unwillingly, and a strange breed

 

of angel would appear, who power-lunged ahead

in him, like a nine-ironed cane toad

strumming the harp of its innards. He chaired

 

the rough proceedings; his instinct was to shield

the younger two, so he hogged

the conch for himself, refused to yield

 

his time on the floor. It barely worked.

The second lad

now lives in Chermside,

 

is twice divorced,

inseparable from his dogs, Sinbad

and Hector, and hardly ever wets the bed.

 

The youngest I know well. He tried

so hard

to watch his fucking mouth he went cross-eyed

 

as he shivered in the shed.

So Vic turned optometrist, measured

the spite of each sharp clip across the void

 

to reset the dials on the poor bastard.

His thick glasses make him look a bit weird,

but I’m proud

 

of my stepdad, who I call Dad,

who finally ended it, and who probably only ended

his brief church speech when he shared

 

all this with me later, long after he had belted

me blue for the last time. I was reminded

of it this weekend

 

when I saw him reach behind the bread

and casually plug the cord

into the wall socket, the way it was intended,

 

while he bubbled

up with pride

about the Broncos, who had

 

never finished

dead

last on the ladder, and the hard water roiled.

 

Jaya Savige was born in Sydney, grew up on Bribie Island and lives and works in London. He is the author of Latecomers and Surface to Air. His next collection is forthcoming with UQP in 2020.