Brown Skin Blue (14 page)

He folds his arms. ‘Dunno. Dad woke up, Mum was screaming, and everyone was running outside.'

‘You okay?'

He shrugs.

I don't know what to say. At the top of the street, the fire-truck appears, large and red, its siren screaming. People scatter to the footpaths on each side of the road and stand like a guard of honour as the truck passes. We move back to the side of the yard as the truck stops and the firemen get out. Hoses appear, water gushes out and the flames, like angry beasts, rage and hiss as they shrink and die under the pressure. Soon the house is a wet, smoking corpse.

Neighbours come and surround Tyson's family and they are huddled and moved to the hotel beer garden. Tyson takes my hand.

Beer, hot chips and soft drinks are brought out for them as they sit, stunned and mute, on the timber chairs. No one says much. People shuffle and shake their heads. They look awkwardly towards the family and then back at their home. They scratch their heads and huddle in pairs to retell how they each came to notice what was happening. Someone turns the jukebox off at the wall. Blankets appear from somewhere. They are passed hand-to-hand and placed
on the top of the table, but none of Tyson's family make a move towards them.

Behind me I hear someone talking. ‘I live right next door. We're bloody lucky it wasn't us. Just as well it didn't spread, either. Geez, a thing like that could have taken off. Reckon we should say our prayers tonight.'

I'm glad I'm not God. One person thanking him and another cursing him at the same time and all the while it's probably for something he didn't do anyway. I don't reckon it's God that leaves toasters on or custard cooking on the stove top or motorhomes driving by themselves. Reckon that's just us not wanting to take the blame.

I get up to go to the bathroom and I see Toucan, Stumpy and Boomboom standing near the bar together. ‘Shit happens,' Toucan says.

‘Poor bastards,' Stumpy adds.

Toucan sniffs. ‘Still, they've got their kids, hey. That's all that really matters.'

It was the fifties and, for a young lad, the whole world hadn't even begun. He was stocky, naturally dark skinned, determined and hardworking. Like his own grandfather before him, his hair fell out early and he looked older than he ever was. But underneath his skin was the blood of a red-dreamer. And he bought into the next sure thing with every penny he had.

The Humpty Doo Rice Project, part of the great white dream. To turn one of the largest, unfarmed wastelands of the world into a thriving oasis. It was all on the tables: plans, projections, the money to be made. There were Hollywood investors, American TV personalities. Humpty Doo was going to be one of the biggest producers of rice in the whole world. Forget Asia, Australia here we come.

His parents were blue-collar workers, earning their weekly pay cheque by turning up on time and going back every day. But talk of the project gave their son something different to picture. Another way life might go. He suddenly wanted to be his own boss, a man of the land. Rising and sleeping with the sun and, in between, making a living with his hands. He wanted to be a part of taming something, of taking the raw and rough of the Top End and making it work for the man. This was one of the last places in the world for a pioneer to carve through the unknown.
Imagine that,
he would think,
taming the jungle and beating the bush. Just like the Wild West.

Hope was something his parents had buried long ago, like so many after the Second World War.
We're not safe from anything. Bloody Japs came right to our doorstep.
And here was their son thinking he could change the way things were done. Growing Jap food and turning the world upside down. He was going against every sensible piece of advice they had given him, every instinct they had learned to obey.
Stay the straight road, son. Don't be thinkin' you can beat odds even your betters couldn't beat. You don't know what it's like to fight and lose, boy. You're a fool to try and we'll be here to remind you when it all comes crashing down. Rice is for the yellowman and we bloody fought to keep 'em out.

But talk like that just flamed the fire he had inside himself. There was no point being young and alive with ideas and passion if he didn't do something. And by Christ he would die trying. There was something inside him, as crucial as bones and muscles and blood and breath, and he had to flex it. Why else was a man born if not to tread his own path?

He threw everything he had into his farm like effort was the measure of a man and commitment was all it took to change odds and fortune. He buried his feet in the land and his hands in the mud and determined to stay that way – with his arse in God's face – until his future grew from the ground up. He knew there'd be setbacks and disappointments – he wasn't stupid – but he'd hang on, no matter what.

Birds and beasts ate the seedlings.

He planted them again.

Money was promised to the project and never came.

He ate less.

He was often seen out in his own field, long after the other workers had knocked off for the day, and then long after many farmers had given up and left their land altogether. Some called him the scarecrow of Humpty Doo.

Budgets were cut.

He made do.

His silhouette was somehow always there, black against the setting sun. His bald head, hands on hips, lookin' out across it all. Or bent over, planting and picking.

Floods came and washed everything away. Rain dried up and the sun fried the shoots.

With nothing else left to try, he pleaded with nature.
Come on, I've given you everything I have. Don't you let me down.

Some say the project failed because Australia was just too big to manage the transport. You can cut up the jungle and carve out the desert, but there's no way you can beat the distance. She'll get you every time. Some say it was the wild itself that doomed it from the beginning. Nature's a heartless bitch. She'll shake the boy out of the man and make him cry like a baby.

It took guts to stay on, long after dark, long after the company closed and the banks demanded their money back. It took guts to be the last man standing out in that field, holding on like he was the only one left. The last of his kind. Just waiting and waiting until hope was just a four-letter word cursing his own name. Guts, that is, or fear.

At first he refused to believe that it was happening, that the whole idea was squashed under the weight of so much Australia. He just couldn't accept that his own sense of himself could be so misplaced. What use was conviction and inspiration when the dice were loaded against him? Worst of all, his parents had been right. His dreams were a fool's fancy and failure was the price to pay for trying. Who was he to fight against what he was, what his parents were, and what they had always known?

It was only after the scarecrow had disappeared for good that he was called Toucan, by those that knew him. Seemed to others that one day he just flew away, but Toucan had given up. He'd played with life and lost.

It was Dolly Mundy who found his old bones and ruffled his feathers.
A man like you's a rare thing. I'd liked to have seen you there, out in your field. I'd have been a good woman to have by your side.

Dolly knew she could have made all the difference. Toucan gave her the woman she could have been and that story was better than the real thing.

Her stories were everything.

Deer Barry,

The cops have been around arsking for you. Thay say the goverment is ofering suport to the kids that were atacked around here. I dont know if yore inerested or not so I didnt tell them where you were but I thort I wood let you know.

Its been qiet without you around here. Im sick too. Doktors say I got canser. In me skin. Im in the same plase if you want to come and see yor old mother some time befor its to layte. Yore a good boy Barry.

Dolly

The Mindil markets are packed tonight. There's so many people here we had to park on a side-street miles away. Boof
said in the car that some nights they can get around fifteen thousand people coming.

The sun hasn't set yet, and we're sitting on fold-out chairs on the beach front, watching the sun light up the sky like a rainbow firecracker.

Vendors, selling everything from food to kids' toys, have their stalls running parallel along the central concrete path. At least a quarter of the stalls sell food. Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese, Thai, Indian, Italian. And the most enormous pancakes stuffed with caramel, chocolate, bananas and strawberries, covered in chocolate syrup and cream. There's even cinnamon donuts.

We're all here. Cassie, Boof, Sally, Bob and me. The drive over was the most uncomfortable journey of my life. Sally in the middle of the back seat with Bob on one side and me on the other. Bob talking non-stop with his hand on Sally's leg. She didn't say much and I tried squashing myself as close to the door as I could. I have this hating her/missing her tug-of-war under my chest. I feel bruised.

Sally's tried to smile at me a few times and I've ignored her. Cassie and Boof left the chairs to get food and Bob went in search of the toilets. Now I'm stuck here alone with Sally.

‘What gives, Barra?' she says, leaning over towards me.

I look out over the water.

She sits back against the chair and crosses her legs. She's got the top leg swinging like an impatient metronome. ‘What's got up your arse?' She's angrier this time.

My head flicks back towards her. ‘You've got some
nerve,' I spit. ‘I saw you. with Bob. At my bloody hotel the other night!'

She looks back at me blankly, her eyes open wide and her mouth set in a straight, thin line. ‘We've got no ties, Barra.'

‘What are you playing at?' I've said more than I wanted to. She knows I'm angry and hurt. Shit.

‘Listen,' her tone is softer. Her mouth changes into a nervous tug. ‘There's things you don't understand. There's stuff I couldn't tell you.'

‘Got that right.'

‘Anyway. I told you not to be a girl about things. I'm still your friend, Barra.'

‘And Bob?'

She's quiet and her mouth sets hard. Her eyes tighten.

I'm none the wiser about Sally, what's going on or anything else. ‘Well thanks for bloody nothin',' I say, standing up.

‘You're not the only one with problems, Barry,' she yells after me.

I'm out of there. I've got money in my pocket and a coffin that still feels bare and lonely. It needs something more.

‘Best croc skin around,' the vendor says.

I'm standing at the front of a small stall. There's people swarming everywhere around me. Some are right up beside me, poking their faces across the table lookin' at the array of purses and bags, belts and cigarette cases. Fairy lights and trails of coloured bulbs are strung around the frames of the
little stalls. Groups of musicians have set up, dotted here and there among the stalls. At certain places the music from two different groups blends into a mash of instruments and voices. Like here at the crocodile skin stall. There's so many people here you have to watch where you walk. Everywhere you turn, there's someone else trying to move into or out of that same spot.

‘Nothin' like croc skin,' the vendor continues. He's dark but not Aboriginal. He looks Middle-Eastern. His eyes are whiter and the ridges on his face are darker than the rest of his skin.

‘The most fierce, ancient and deadly creatures in the wild, they are, but their skin is worth a fortune. Just look at the depth of colour. The strength. Sheer beauty.'

Before me, the stitched and polished croc skin shines. There are varieties of black, brown, reds and even blues where the leather has been dyed. I pick up a small black wallet. It's cold in my hand. This could be Albert or Mavis or Fester. I hand over the money and slip the wallet into my back pocket. I've still got some change so I look around the stalls on my way back to the chairs. I'm taken in by an assortment of wooden guns. One shoots rubber bands. I buy it.

Cassie and Boof are back at the chairs but Sally and Bob are gone.

‘Barramundy,' Boof says, seeing me approach. ‘You can be the first to hear the good news.'

I sit down.

‘Bait is going to be alright.' Boof holds up his mobile phone as proof, then slips it back inside his shirt pocket.

Cassie punches Boof in the arm. ‘And,' she says.

‘And we're movin' in together. Her place,' Boof adds, bending across her chair to kiss her on the cheek.

‘Congratulations,' I mumble. I'm really happy for them.

‘Hey,' Boof adds, ‘what happened to those people near the hotel? You heard anything else?'

The news about the fire has ripped through the whole Top End. It's been on the local news, the papers. There was even a reporter who came around the hotel the day after. I took off soon as I saw him. But on the news later that night, there he was, standing on the dirt patch, talking about the fire. In one frame, a chicken scurried past on the ground behind his legs. None of the family wanted to talk about it, but plenty of the neighbours were happy to retell just what happened. They stood right outside the house, pointing to the black mound of rubble, wide-eyed. Toucan even got his face on the news. Just a quick word about how he was one of the first to see what was happening.

I haven't seen Tyson or the family since that night. I don't know where they are, where they've gone. It's like everyone is excited about their tragedy and it feels wrong. A whole family has lost everything.

‘I haven't heard anything,' I say. It's really the truth. I've heard the same story a hundred times over, but nothing else.

‘Whatcha get?' Boof leans over towards me. I hold up the gun.

‘Here,' he says. ‘Pass it over.'

Boof turns in his chair to face the path. Sally and Bob are walking towards us. He's got his arm around her shoulders.

Boof holds up the gun and aims. The rubber band flies from the end of the gun and smacks Bob in the face.

‘Right on the donger!' Boof says, laughing.

Suddenly I'm laughing. I can't stop. And it feels bloody good.

We're sitting right beside a small, open, grassed area. There are old tin cans spread out in a circle around the space and children have been playing around them since we arrived. A woman with dreadlocks and Doc Martin boots shoos the kids away and they run to sit behind the tin cans. The woman walks around the circle with a long stick. She lights the end with a lighter and touches the top of each can with it. Flames leap up out of the cans, which must have been filled with metho. The flames are burning and there's a black smoke coming off each one. A smoky, earthy smell mixes with the food smells.

There are bamboo torches stuck into the ground at the back of the grassed area near the fence. An old blue kombi van sits in between two torches and completes the circular space. The woman disappears inside the kombi and a crowd gathers around the tin torches.

A man emerges from the van, followed by a boy. They're in scraggy, coloured clothes, striped socks and boots. The man has braces attached to his three-quarter length pants
and doesn't wear a shirt. His muscles move and bulge as he walks.

‘Ladies and gentlemen and children,' he says spreading his arms out wide to the side. ‘Tonight you are going to be entertained by the Travelling Charmers.'

The crowd is growing and everyone claps. Suddenly the boy leaps up from behind the man's back to stand on his shoulders.

‘Edward is only eight, ladies and gentlemen, but there's no trick he can't do.'

Music starts playing, like carousel music. The woman appears again. Her face is painted white and she's in a thin, white dress.

For a while, all I'm watching is the tricks that these people can do. Acrobatic rolls and jumps, lifts and falls. The kid is amazing. He's got no fear. Then there are the fire tricks. Both the man and the woman breathe fire. They take a long stick with a wad of material on the end and spit metho on to it. Flames leap out and everyone claps. The man swallows a sword, he swallows fire. The boy chases a fire wheel, keeping it moving with a stick. He jumps through a circle that's on fire. The woman lights up fireballs on the end of strings and twirls them all around her body. The music changes. Fast and slow, happy and sad. Each of them disappears into the van and changes clothes.

Underneath all the excitement and tricks, there's a story. It's almost so subtle, no one notices. I watch all the kids pointing and gasping at the fire tricks. Some kids have glowin-the-dark swords and they swing them around. And behind
them, just beyond the kombi and the little wire fence, is the ocean. Slapping against the sand. A backdrop of rhythm and soul. The sun is a red glow on the horizon, the sea is black for a while before the sun goes for good. It's only the fire in the grassed ring that glows.

But the story is there. The man and the woman are saying,
look how great we are, look what we can do!
And the boy jumps out from between them, here and there, and he says,
look at me, look what I can do, too!
But the adults don't see him, they move away, push him away, take away his toys. Yet the crowd see him, only they know what is going on. They pick it up after a while and start clapping and cheering when the boy does his tricks. They boo when the adults take his things away.

And then there's the crisis of the show. The fire wheel, which has been brought in during the show, won't light. The woman tries, the man tries, but it won't work. They try out every acrobatic and magic trick they can think of, but it won't work. It's strange how simple stories work. Everyone knows what's going to happen, by now, but it still feels tense inside your chest, you still hope that it will work out, we still want the boy to win.

And then it happens. The boy stands underneath the fire wheel. No tricks. He folds his hands over his chest, bows, then blows a kiss. Fire leaps out of his mouth and catches onto the fire wheel, which lights up and spins around. There are small firecrackers in the wheel and they snap and explode and zoom around. The colours light up: blue, red, gold and green.

The Travelling Charmers hold hands in the centre of the circle in front of the fire wheel and bow. The audience claps and cheers. Somehow it feels good watching something happen inside a green circle that would never happen in real life. A mother, a father, a son. Setting the world on fire and holding hands to watch the glow.

For the last leg of the ride home, it's just me and Sally in the back seat. As I get out of the car Sally slides across and stands on the ground behind me.

‘Give us a minute?' she turns to Boof.

Boof shrugs his shoulders.

I walk to my door with Sally behind me. It feels good that she wants to talk to me while I'm trying to punish her.

‘Listen, Barra, there's something you don't know,' she says to my back. ‘It's not just what you think. Don't hate me, Barra. I got myself into trouble and I'm tryin' to do the right thing. Talk to me at lunch tomorrow. I'll tell you more then.'

Why is it only men in the movies who know what to do? They're always the strong, fix-it, muscle types who take care of everything. Even if they let their women down, they're strong about it. They've still got something women want. And another thing I know, I've gotta go and see my mum.