Brown Skin Blue (15 page)

A storm breaks over Humpty Doo. It hammers rain the whole night, pounding on my tin roof. I sleep in little naps because the noise is so loud. Just when I fall into a deeper sleep, thunder cracks and wakes me up. Or the rain eases off and then belts down again. Pity it wasn't raining the night Tyson's mother left the toddler's bottle warming in the saucepan on the stove. That's what people around the pub are saying caused the fire.

The trouble with rain is it won't stay at one pace. If it was just one speed and sound you could get used to it and sleep on through. But it changes and your body can never quite settle into a rhythm.

I feel groggy and edgy this morning. I open the door to find the rain streaming down from the sky like corrugated tin sheeting. The ground is muddy and flooded and no one
is around. Rain is something you have to accept if you live in the tropics, but it's a pest for the tourist industry. Not many people brave torrential rain to see the crocs when they could put it off for a fine day.

I'm about to run for the shower when there's a knock on my door. Bessy is there under a large striped umbrella.

‘Got a call from your boss. He says not to come into work today. Have a day off.' She doesn't wait for a response before she's off, tiptoeing through the puddles back to the pub.

I'm about to close the door when I see Tyson sitting on the edge of the concrete path that runs from the door to the diner along the line of motel rooms. His body is just covered by the awning, but his legs and feet stick out in the rain. He splats his feet in the puddles on the ground. I close my door behind me and walk over to him.

‘Hi there,' I say, sitting down next to him on the path. He doesn't look up. ‘How's everything going? I haven't seen you around here lately. I thought you all must have gone somewhere.'

‘We're staying with my auntie just down the road from our house,' he says.

‘How's your foot?'

His feet stop slapping the ground. ‘Pretty good. Still got the scar though.' He lifts his foot up, heel towards me. There's a red, jagged ridge across the sole of his foot.

‘Wow. You'll probably still be able to see it when you're my age. Hey, I never got around to telling you how cool your chicken trick is.'

‘My dad taught it to me.'

‘Yeah?'

‘Yeah. That's all I remember of him.'

‘So the guy that's with your mum, he's not your dad, then?'

Tyson shakes his head. ‘Dad left when I was a kid.'

The way he says it makes me feel cold and tight in my throat. He couldn't be more than nine or ten and I'm suddenly sitting beside him wondering how long it's been since he's thought of himself as a child. It's like I'm sitting next to a version of myself at the same age. Lost between a childhood that might never have been and a sea of nothing in between. Grown up and ground down too quick.

‘You ever see him? Your dad?'

‘Na. Mum says he was good for nothin' anyway.' He turns to me, his white God-eyes lookin' at me. Lookin' up at me. ‘You got a dad?'

‘Na. I'm like you.'

‘We're leaving tomorrow.'

‘You'll be right, Tyson. Sometimes moving on is better.'

‘You reckon?'

‘Sure. Just ... just you gotta watch where you put your feet in life. Gotta watch out for glass.'

He smiles and turns back to watch the rain.

‘Come on,' I find myself saying as I stand up. ‘Come here.' I step off the path to stand in the rain. My feet are in the mud and it's soft and cold and slippery. ‘Let's get totally wet and forget where we are. Come on, don't even think about it.'

Tyson stands next to me. We hold out our arms and the rain bashes down on us. I lift my face up to the sky and, just before my eyes close, I catch just a glimpse of a single tear drop. I'm wet and heavy. For the first time in ages, my head is clear and I can't think of anything.

On the ground it's like our feet and the earth are one. We could be melting into the mud or emerging out of it, depending how you look at it. Today we come from the land and nothing else. The sky is raining a river.

Men in movies always make the most of their opportunities. When something comes their way, like the weather – or an army or a government hit-man – they change tack. It's like they've always got a pre-made plan in their minds for any eventuality. And when things change they just look for the next option. So I'm thinkin' that if I can't go to work today and I've got the weekend to follow, I should take the bus and see my mother. I don't exactly want to. But I don't want to end up being the jerk that didn't go, either.

I sent Tyson back to his auntie's place loaded up with stuffed crocs, tea towels and a couple of boomerangs.

Mum lives in Katherine and, now that I'm here, it takes me a while to find the van. Mum's in the hospital, but I have to see the van first.

Things have changed since I left, even though it doesn't seem that long ago. The van is empty and it's smaller than
I remember. I have trouble imagining how we both lived in it together all those years. It's still got the same curtains above the table, though they're thinner now. You can almost see each thread in the worn patches. I pull the curtains back and remember lookin' at Mum burying the wooden spoon in the dirt outside when we lived in Batchelor. My bed is still next to the table along the side wall. When I was a child her bed always seemed so far away from mine, so cut off from my side of the van. But it only takes me two decent steps now from one bed to the other.

There's an old smell in here. It hits me the moment I walk inside. Like burnt mutton, tobacco and mothballs. But after a while it's familiar and I realise it's always been here. Lurking in the wood panelling, the lino, the air. I know that if I stay for too long I won't even smell it anymore. It won't even exist. It will just be a part of who I am.

I feel like I've been hiding for years and the moment I leave this van everyone will know where I've been. They'll see me clear as day, and I don't want it. I want to be a croc with my own stretch of river. They can feed me and look at me, but don't no one come too close. I just might bite.

We're closer to crocs than you might think.

One bloke on a cruise once was telling us how he reckons crocs used to be warm-blooded creatures because his research showed that their ancient relatives were smaller and faster and probably chased their prey more actively. Whereas the modern-day croc has evolved into a coldblooded creature. It sits and waits for the right opportunity to catch its prey. Crocs can also slow their heartbeats down
at will, sometimes beating only once in thirty seconds. Like cryo-sleep. I think it'd be easier being cold-blooded. Caring a whole lot less about anything other than your own patch of water. And sometimes I think I already am. Sometimes I think that because of what happened I could survive anything. I know how to hold my breath and wait. And if I could only learn how to slow my heart rate down, too, I might learn how not to care so much. I might even think I'm happy.

I walk to the edge of my mum's bed, kneel down on the ground, and reach my hand underneath the mattress. I can feel dust and knobbly bits and pieces. My hand touches the edge of something hard and solid and I drag it to the side. It's Mum's box.

I shake it first. It rattles. The things inside move and bump together. I take the lid off and the bottom of the box is covered with little coloured, wooden drink umbrellas. There aren't as many as I thought there would be. The box seems emptier than it should be, too. I was expecting it to be stacked to the top with umbrellas. My fingers are running across each of them. I'm lookin' for something particular in the box, though I'm not exactly sure what it is. Yet I have a feeling that it's not there. And then I realise what I'm lookin' for. A blue umbrella. There are pink and yellow and orange umbrellas, but not one blue. I close the lid carefully and slide it back under the bed. It's a lonely, bland coffin. All of Mum's dreams and hopes. The only reminder that she was young and beautiful once. Collecting the most exotic thing she could lay her hands on. But somehow my mum is already in there. The nothingness of her life rattling in the spaces between the
umbrellas. No one will ever find her, I think to myself. I'm the only one who knows where she is.

I'm outside walking from the van to the hospital. She's up there, lying in a bed, waiting. I'm suddenly panicking about what we'll talk about. I don't really have anything to tell about my life since I left. In some ways I was more interesting back then. I don't want to tell her about Sally or Boof or Cassie. I don't want to tell her I hack into pig meat, or how I wash the windows and floors of the boats. The only thing I can think to tell her about is the crocs. They're somehow impartial and interesting all on their own.

When I see her lying in the bed, the first thing I'm aware of is how thin she is. Her skin sags and hangs where her weight used to be. Something has sucked her dry.

‘Hello, Mum.'

‘Barry?' she opens her eyes.

‘Hi,' I say.

She's quiet for a minute, lookin' me up and down. She smiles and pats the edge of her bed. ‘Come closer.'

‘I got your letter,' I say, sitting in the armchair that is next to the bed.

She nods. Her breathing is strained. ‘Yeah. I took a bad turn after sending you that. Happened quick.'

‘They treating you good? The doctors?'

‘Yeah. Can't complain.'

It's good to hear her say this. It means her old self is still around.

‘Tell me what you've been up to, Barry. I want to hear everything.'

It's a small request, but it's a big ask. I don't think I've got enough to fill in the gaps. ‘Well,' I start, ‘I work for the Croc Jumping Cruises.'

Her eyes widen and she's really interested, and it isn't as hard as I thought it was going to be. I tell her about it all. Just the fun stuff, everything I know about the place. The crocs and what I have to do. I even tell her about the Humpty Doo Hotel and my room.

A nurse comes in to check on Mum. I get up and leave the room while she does her thing. The nurse pulls a curtain around the bed so I can't see what's going on. I walk down the corridor lookin' for something to eat. There's a vending machine at the end of the passage near the visitors' lounge.

‘You can go back in now,' the nurse calls from the end of the passage. I feed my money into the machine for a small bar of chocolate.

Mum is propped up on two fat pillows and her sheets are straightened and pulled tight across her body. There's a fresh jug of water on the small table beside her bed. A cup, with a blue straw, beside it.

‘Listen, Barry. I'm not real good, you know. Doctors don't think I've got long.'

The statement hangs awkwardly in the space between us. ‘Take the van and the car. They're yours. I'm real glad you came back to see me.'

‘I met Teabag,' I say because I can't think of anything else.

She looks at me for a while. ‘Teabag?'

‘Yeah. Lives in Darwin.'

‘He's not your father,' she says quickly. It's not a question but a statement.

‘What do you mean?'

Something in her eyes changes. Like she's said something she didn't mean to. ‘Nothin',' she says. ‘It's just that I never really thought it was actually him.'

‘Then why?'

‘It's not important, Barry.'

‘But—'

‘Leave it, Barry.'

She closes her eyes and her pulse flutters erratically in her neck. For a moment I feel like I'm about to lose everything I ever had and the weight of it is swallowing me from the inside.

‘It's skin cancer,' she says, her eyes still closed. ‘My bloody white skin and all that sun. Spread through my body.' She opens her eyes and looks at me. ‘You should be thankful for the skin you have, Barry. You're dark. And you didn't get that from me.' She pauses. ‘Those names I gave you, Barry, see, any one of them would have made a good father. They're the ones I want you to have.'

‘So, you mean you didn't tell me—'

‘What I told you was better than the truth, Barry. And I'd rather die than tell you who your father is.'

‘You know?'

‘Yeah. I know. A girl always knows,' she says quietly, her voice like shifting gravel.

‘You told me a bunch of friggin' lies?' I stand up and move to the side of the bed. I feel my whole body start to heat up like I'm on fire.

She opens her eyes and I wish she was strong so I could lash out at her. I want to scream and yell and tell her she was a lousy mother and I wished I belonged to someone else. I want to shake her and make it all change. I want to wind back the clock and set things right, like I know I could. But she's shrivelled and wasted and I can't help her any more than I can help myself.

‘Don't hate me forever, Barry. You've got every right but I'm askin' you.'

‘Who? Who is it then?' I yell.

‘Trust me, Barry. Leave it be.'

I haven't driven in a while but it feels good holding the wheel in my hands. I don't look back. I hear the tyres spin on the gravel and feel the bounce of the van manoeuvring over the uneven edge of the road. Katherine shrinks into the rear-view mirror. I feel free but it's a dark and heavy change. Like I'm running down the road out of trouble with all my rubbish bolted to my legs.

I stop twice before I get home. The first time I pull over in Batchelor where we lived when I was eight. Blue's town.

Then, closer to home, I pull over at a shopping centre to buy supplies for the week. The usual bread, coke, milk, juice. There's no Donut King in the shopping centre, so I plan to buy a pre-packed dozen donuts from Woolworths.

On my way to the bakery department I walk down the party aisle. I suddenly see small packets of cocktail umbrellas hanging in rows, sixty-nine cents a packet. I can't take my eyes away from them. I wish my mum hadn't saved up cocktail umbrellas, thinkin' they were something flash and fancy, when she could have bought them at Woolworths for less than a dollar. That's what it must mean to be worthless: a better life is more affordable than a loaf of bread.