BUCKLE MY SHOE

From a flier passed around during the last Friday of the month happy hour by the man in unit number 12.

Do you remember when

Water trickled down the butcher shop window

The postman blew a whistle

Petrol was sold on the curbside

The night cart never failed to wake us in the morning

Police on point duty wore a white summer helmet

A bag full of broken biscuits could be had for a tuppence

Bread was sold from a basket

Clothes were lifted from boiling water with a copper stick

STUCK IN THE TREE

Before the handyman leaves for the pastures of working in a state prison, I help him build a railing above an embankment, in case car passengers get confused, disembark on the wrong side and take a tumble down to the road. Then he's off to be trained in a life behind bars and I'm left to plant out a flower bed. At lunch I check out the library in town and make enquiries at the local nursery to see what would suit planting. Back at work again, and beginning to turn the soil, I hear a voice and turn to see a short old woman looking down from her balcony, the number 17 stenciled on the balcony base. I said now at least I'll get to see some colour from behind these dreaded iron grills. There are no restraints on her windows as far as I can tell, just the bars of the balcony that I can see, so maybe she's shrinking, I've heard that happening to women as they get older, yes, she's maybe shrinking and her view is starting to resemble more and more a prison cell. Then she says: I'll give you a thousand dollars if you break me out of here. It's tempting, but I decide not to act on it right away, in case it's needed further down the line. At least you're trying to make something beautiful. That's the very least we can do while we're here. But unfortunately your flower bed will be a small part on an otherwise enormous canvas irreparably damaged by an onslaught of grey. She calls me a sweetheart and says it wouldn't be so bad were the house she'd lived in for the past thirty years not six minutes drive away. Once her husband had died, her sons decided that she was in no fit state to be living alone anymore, and so arranged for her to be moved into this: old people's home. That's what it is. Why don't they just say it? You look like you need a whiskey. I tell her maybe later, and mean it. Alone. My sons don't know what alone is. I lived alone the last few years with Otto anyway. Otto? Her husband. Apparently he'd retreated more more the last few years of his life into the machinations of his increasingly muddled mind. She first noticed the change in him when he would suddenly burst out laughing for no particular reason. Then he started dancing in the middle of the street, usually dressed, and she ended up having to lock the front gate, but it never stopped him from trying to climb over. Often she would find him passed out from exhaustion under a nearby tree, impossible to wake, and far too large for her to move. So she would sit there with him, whatever the weather, and look at the tree stump which they had oiled together all those years ago, to preserve the rings, for they knew the rings would outlast them all, and it was the first tree they felled when they came to these parts to raise a family.

TROMBONES

From what I can tell, the majority of the residents appear to be female. And of the men, there are only a few with wives, the rest either widowers, or bachelors from the very beginning (as it's said, a bachelor knows a woman better than anyone - that's why he's a bachelor). I meet one of the couples when asked to deliver a repaired kitchen drawer. They're in unit 15. A white haired woman with glasses half the size of her head lets me in, and the moment I step inside I'm struck by heat and a wave of eucalyptus oil mixed with the unmistakable aroma of recently fried eggs and bacon. My eyes are soon stinging and I can only comfortably see when I squint. Across the room, a giant of a man sits in an armchair. A blanket covers his lap. A ventilator sits on the ground beside him. He waves me over with a hand the size of a bear paw. He used to run a winery, he says, almost single handedly. And then he makes me promise that I will look after my knees, in fact he makes me swear that I will look after my knees. Closer, closer, he says, I want to see the whites of your eyes when you swear to me. But I'm not sure there's any white left after the aromatic onslaught, but I lean in closer anyway and look at him, and yes swear that I will look after my knees. His wife reminisces about running their small farm, the children who would be running beneath her feet, the roast chickens, neighbors, friends and family who'd come round for Sunday dinner, their own proudly produced wine freely available, the bottles they'd leave for guests to take home. As she tells me this, he interjects every now and then to provide some names, and with some names would come an associated memory, a particular tractor or axe perhaps, the time they all built that barn together, him and his brother in law, his brother in law's best friend, Jeffery something, he may have just been passing by, passing by, why would someone just be passing by like that, right there and then, it doesn't make sense. The man and woman's sentences often overlap, seem to blend in to one and the same. Or else they simply speak as if the other is not speaking. Then he asks me to help him up, so I take hold of his forearms, gradually lean back, and pull him to his feet. His shoulders are stooped, and yet he's still a head and a half taller than I am. She smiles, speaks as if he's not even in the room with us anymore. He was the strongest man I'd ever known. The absolute strongest. And the kindest man too you'd ever likely come across. I've a photo of him somewhere holding our four children up in the air, one in each arm, one on each shoulder. The strongest. Without a doubt the strongest.

TWO BY TWO

When I first came to the mountains, I rented a room from a Dutchman, who had a Filippino wife, or maid, I could never tell which. They turned out to be Jehovah's Witnesses, with an old bus out back covered with a mural of various scenes taken from the bible, with prophets looking as if they were more from Norway than the desert, that kind of thing. It was the first ad I called that didn't set off the answering machine, and the room was cheap, at least something I could afford before the miniscule savings finally ran out, and I mean miniscule, they'd gotten down to a grand pretty damn quick and were now hovering a baby's step above the five hundred mark. But there was no need to let the Witnesses in on that little bit of information. Better I thought to let them assume by my dress and manner of speaking that I was the resectable sort who wouldn't be a bother come rent day. Rent day was Monday, between one and two in the afternoon, to be precise. That was how the Dutchman like to have it handled, so there'd be no misunderstandings, no mixed messages, that kind of thing. He lived with the woman in the main part of the house, closer to the bus out in the backyard, in case they needed a quick dose of inspiration every now and then, while the tenants - myself and two others - each occupied a room in a building looking as if it must once have been a barn. Occasionally I'd think that there must have one time been a plan to try and replicate Noah's masterpiece, for you'd find long loose pieces of wood around the place, masquerading as floor boards here and there, or sections of wall, or separators between the living quarters, all finely sanded, and of a high grade timber. The wood resembled merbau (not that I'm all too familiar with such things) and reminded me of helping a flighty friend once build a deck on the back of a place up the coast one beetroot summer, and it makes me see shuffling pictures again of the surf, the sisters we met, and the copy of Seneca one of them gave me for the train ride back to the city, now sitting well thumbed on another length of finely sanded, evenly oiled piece of wood, atop two neat piles of bricks. Noel had the largest of the rooms, at least three times the size of the other two combined, on account of his being a tenant of a considerable length, as well as someone of utmost reliability when it came to paying the rent, that kind of thing, according to the Dutchman, who didn't appear too far off from adding Noel's portrait to the side of the bus, limited space perhaps being the only obstacle. Nelly was in the other room. He arrived in the house about an hour before I did, the result was that his room was double the size of mine. But that was okay, his room was a little bit more expensive too, and besides, I needed the extra change for cereal, to go with the change of scenery. And I wasn't expecting any visitors anyhow. I just needed somewhere to sleep, that's all, planning to spend most of the waking hours in the bush somewhere, getting lost, finding my way out, getting lost again, that kind of thing.

WOBBLY WOBBLY

They covered me in yellow plastic so as to help keep me dry, or so that I could be more easily located if lost somewhere in the wind and sideways rain, or so that I was not mistaken for an apparition of doom if any of the village residents decided to go for a drive and saw me blocking their path. Needless to say, it was important to stay alert. Inflated pride kept me on my toes, as even in an afterlife I could picture an overflowing well of shame due to some pill popping geriatric somehow stumbling across my death in a car far too powerful for such bony hands. Alert, I had to stay alert, be especially on the lookout for any self defeating distractions of thought, petty things really, such as how to stay warm and dry, or what the hell I was doing working three days a week in a retirement village of all places, as a groundsman, as a gardener, or whatever the hell they were calling me today. Working for peanuts, for watery, tasteless peanuts, that someone had forgotten to roast, or even partially salt. Yes, it was definitely time for a tea break, and a peanut butter sandwich too perhaps. Until I remembered I'd forgotten to prepare any food in the morning, more concerned as to why a family of mice had recently decided to move in to my house. And besides, I'd forgotten to buy any peanut butter. The tea would have to do, flowing from the urn in the staff room as if released from prison, or as if the pressure was getting too much and my cold shriveled hand turning the tap to fill my cup had somehow saved the day.

DOCTOR'S ORDERS

The hospital is beside the retirement village and the cemetery is beside the hospital. Maybe you could complete the circle with the introduction of a child care centre somewhere. Beside the retirement village perhaps. That way the elderly can experience the circle of existence for themselves, right up front, and meanwhile get a good dose of energy from spritely infants without having to wait for a visit from the great-grandchildren, which I've yet to witness. It makes me think of Barcelona, where we went for our honeymoon, way back when. And even then we were saying give us a good mix of generations any day, it's better for everyone.

 

Evenings wandering Barcelona streets. That one place where we were told there were often four generations at once savoring the sumptuous hospitality, kids snaking through legs, under the feet of unhurried waiters. That one place, I forget the name. Jesus, I forget the owner's name too. That's not good. It was only seven years ago. I'm tempted to call him Juan Sebastian, but something about it just doesn't sit right. It could be close though. What does it matter now anyway? It'll come back to me. It'll come back.

 

The hospital cafeteria, I'm told, is the place to get a quick bite to eat, if you didn't bring anything with you and you don't want to go in to town on your lunch break. I order a sandwich to go, sit down and wait. At the next table, a white haired woman comes in and joins two others, one of whom she knows, the other she's introduced to. She orders a salad sandwich and a flat white, takes off her coat, sits down. The place is small so you can pretty much hear any voice that's above a whisper, and so three women together poses no problem, or even offers any other option but to hear what they talk about. The woman says she came up to Katoomba to attend to some business, and once done she wanted nothing more than a good coffee and something light to eat. But none of the choices on offer in town held any appeal to her, so she came to the hospital, as she remembered they served good coffee there. She said that once upon a time she used to sit right at this table and sip a cup of coffee, maybe nibble a cheese sandwich, or a slice of cake if something caught her eye, three, four, five, sometimes every day of the week. This was when, she said, her husband used to be a patient here. He's now no longer with us. And she didn't say if he's buried in the cemetery next door or not.

CLEAN THE FLOOR

I watch as the ladies in unit numbers 27 and 28 argue about the feeding of the cockatoos which come most afternoons, perching on a nearby railing. Number 27 (supposedly with a penchant for psychic predictions, one of which includes the premature passing of Mrs Shearer: I give her two years at best) takes the position of vehemently opposing the feeding of the birds, citing repeatedly the appropriate passage in the handbook of rules and regulations. Number 28, on the other hand, who has a fondness for Finnish vodka and the piano sonatas of one Mr Ludvig van Beethoven darling, is strongly in favor of the free distribution of birdseed in any amount she deems suitable. And she feigns retching each time at the mere mention of the stipulated rules.

DOWN ON YOUR KNEES

In unit number 12 lives a man who sees fit to trim the lawn edges outside his front door with a pair of craft scissors and a purple plastic ruler, when he thinks I'm not looking. It shall not be surprising in the slightest to find any successive attempts to meet his exacting standards inevitably ending in failure.

THOSE FAMOUS STEPS

In unit number 21 lives a statuesque woman who comes out and exuberantly expresses her gratitude at my weeding the garden bed outside her bedroom window, as well as shaping with shears the unruly bay tree to a far more agreeable size. With both hands she blows me kisses. She bows and calls me a darling. Later on a tea break I'm told she used to tread the boards in theatres across cities such as London and Edinburgh.

STAYING ALIVE

If there's any doubt about the importance of the lawns in the minds of those who live here, they'll likely be removed with each encounter, however brief. Some of the residents speak about the abilities of my predecessors as if they're comparing the technique of their favorite tennis players. And yet the qualities of my immediate predecessor, it soon becomes clear, shall not be too difficult to surpass. Apparently, rather than regularly attend to the grounds, he preferred the more solitary pursuit of weightlifting in the privacy of the garden shed. This, no doubt, goes to explain the presence of a full length mirror leaning up against one of the walls, as well as an abandoned dumbbell bar, and a small tube of oil that features the imprint of an overly developed headless torso. Rather than have time on his hands, my predecessor, it seems, had weights in them. Perhaps the proximity of so many near the end of their lives reminded my unknown gardening brother of his own mortality, likely encouraging him all the more to push on harder through another set of repetitions, maybe even with some added weight. Either that, or he was merely vain.

TWEAK OF THE THUMB

In the warmer months the lawns are to be cut at least once every ten days and maybe even more during the peak season, depending on the rain. Any stray grass cuttings (the rules of employment stipulate) that are not caught by the catcher are to be carefully raked and properly disposed of atop the compost heap, which needs to be turned through at least once a week with a pitchfork. And it's important never to forget to go back and trim the lawn edges and afterwards use the leaf blower to blow all the paths clear again. Until seeing it for myself in the shed, I never realized a leaf blower was an actual machine, nor a lawn edger for that matter, either. Up till now they would have sounded like some unfortunate, ill paid position a desperate father might have to undertake most weekends to earn enough to sufficiently feed his brood of eight. As for what Mrs Shearer called a whipper-snipper, a process of elimination helps identify that particular contraption. Fortunately the manuals for each device are neatly piled in an oil stained wooden box, beside a large enough collection of chemicals that look as if they could do serious damage to a herd of elephants.

DUCK AND DIVE

Monday morning and Mrs Shearer's walking me around the grounds. We're gone almost an hour.

Remembering Sol's tip, I stop at random places and pick weeds from garden beds, as if I can't help myself, whipping out now and then some recently acquired secateurs and snipping off here and there the heads from dead or dying flowers. Also on occasion I rub some earth between my fingers as if to show that I'm trying to determine soil condition. Then, before lunch, I take Sol's advice and concentrate firstly on the state of the garden bed directly outside the manager's office, weeding, feeding, mulching it, and afterwards noting Mrs Shearer's nods of appreciation, just as Sol had predicted.

She then takes me into her office and stresses the absolute importance of regularly maintaining and manicuring every lawn on the property, for inattention in that department, she says, is something the residents will never fail to notice.

MONKEY'S COUSIN

When I first came to these parts I started counting different things all the while on the drive up, only ceasing upon reaching the sign that stated I was now a thousand steps higher than the sea. Pulling in to fill up the car, I caught sight of the light on my hand still holding the steering wheel, shining on the sunless ring around my finger where an engraved band of silver used to be.

I was so far from home.

We had called the car Gloria on account of the song, filling the background as our bodies were first starting to get to know each other. Now though, no naked legs were catching the last of the summer's light on the front passenger seat. Instead there was a bag of clothes there, a couple of books, and a spare pair of boots in place of her feet.

Sol called ahead to get my foot in the manager's door at the retirement village. The manager, a Mrs Doreen Shearer, hastily explained the relevant duties to be undertaken around the grounds, in between calling out bingo numbers for the gathered residents. For the most part, the duties consisted largely of mowing the lawns and weeding and pruning the various garden beds around the place. 'It's Friday,' she said, after calling out another number, 'so why don't you come back Monday and show me what you can do.' So on Saturday morning I was scanning the library shelves for any volumes on basic gardening techniques, which at the very least added a few extra words to my vocabulary, such as mulch, and secateurs.

ON THE BORDERLINE

When I woke up the sun was getting ready to sleep and I had pictures of women swimming around inside my head that made me wish for their scent and touch again, but that was going to have to wait, who knows how long. Downstairs was still dry as a desert. And amongst the swimming women there were words too, whole snakes of them, swirling through and around the various arms and limbs and delectable bodies and faces. I could make out a phrase or two here and there but that was all. It only took the short walk back to the bar to convince me though that the sentences and such I could see waving about all over the lovely ladies, like seaweed, were from varying lines of the manuscript Louis had posted a while back, and which I had read, and read again, and had even consulted an appropriate dictionary once or twice to see if I would have translated this or that the same way. But I never went near the ones he had left behind in their original state, no, something there was holding me back from going anywhere beyond the most barest of glances.

The bar was busy. Post work quenching going on. I bought a beer and found a corner from which to watch. Next thing I know it's some drinks later and I'm in conversation with a kind eyed man called Sol who looks as if he could with one hand swing me around like a flag if he so chose. And then he offers me a job lugging rock next morning. He's a landscaper, currently building a dry stone wall down the bottom of an escarpment up at a property in Katoomba, though the residents prefer to say it's somewhere in Leura.

The next day, ably accomplishing the task earlier than expected, a little after lunch, he handed over some cash and mentioned a gardener’s position he knew was going at a nearby old people's home, if I was interested. And after jotting down the details, I drove the car to the edge of the bush and promptly went back to sleep again.  

ANNIE'S PILOT

She'd been granted a wish, and so the next thing I knew she was in my field looking to see it fulfilled. This was when I was earning a little extra flying folk around in a biplane, and maybe she'd heard about it through Louis somehow, as I couldn't think of anyone else who we still both knew in common. And now here she was walking towards me: Louis's aunt Annie. She looked much the same as I remembered her from my childhood, dark wavy hair and dark wide eyes, and the kind of skin that'd make me think of swimming in a pool of melting milk chocolate ... I was standing in the morning shadow of the plane when she came up right before me and told me her wish. Afterwards, I started making excuses. I pointed to the sky and I pointed to the ground. I shook my head. I picked up a tuft of grass and threw it in the air and then showed her my extra unsteady hands and said to touch them to see how cold they were and mentioned the sorry state of my cuticles. Next I tried to convince that I had suddenly misplaced my license and that lately the authorities were especially on the lookout for my kind of pilot. And when that didn't work I showed her the holes in my boots and asked her how could she possibly trust a man with such big holes in his boots. And shrugged my shoulders. But she was a persistent, ageless aunt Annie, she just couldn't be discouraged. And to prove to me, I suppose, just how much she wished to fly, Annie started running around the field in all directions, flapping her outstretched arms, propelling herself forward, ascending, turning, hovering, dipping, diving, and levelling out. All in all miming an aeroplane with considerable ease. Actually she was doing it so well that she soon lost all sense of time somewhere along the line as the act of controlling her plane and maintaining its course was proving to be a much greater need for her attention than anything else. And still she continued on with her manoeuvres, increasing her speed, checking her dials and gauges. Then climbing a little higher, she leveled out again, before deciding to perform some more acrobatics, pursuing each task with all the available resources at her disposal, both within and without. Now here she came again, diving, looping, twirling, swirling. Then she cut the engine, hovered midair a moment and stared into the sun, the orange light transfixing her till she realized she could no longer see anything else but the orange light, and nothing could be heard anymore, no, nothing at all but the orange light, and nothing could be felt anymore, no, nothing at all but the orange light. Then suddenly her arms dropped to her side and she stopped. I thought that she must have finally tired herself out, and was glad that she'd managed to have her wish, even if it mightn't have been what she would have imagined at the start. So I decided to leave her there in the field a while, turned and slowly walked away, thinking of breakfast.

A LAWSON LOUNGE

It was a strange combination of realizing I'd forgotten to pack Louis' gadgets - the laptop, the camera - and strikingly, suddenly, trying to fathom what the hell I was doing. I mean, here I was, midmorning sometime, having quickly packed the old car with a few things and with a feint pencil sketched plan to drive to Melbourne and find Albuquerque. What the hell was I doing? I had no idea where he'd be staying, a hostel of some sort was the extent of my knowledge. No contact details either. And my money situation was lower than low. The best I could say was that I had an old car which still ran well enough and a mattress in the back to sleep on. It was starting to feel a little like a dream, so I checked my legs for pajamas, and my belly rumbled as if in response. Jesus, did I even have breakfast? How long had I been driving anyway? Ah, about ten, maybe fifteen minutes down the highway from Katoomba. The town of Lawson was coming up. I remembered hearing how they were building a new town one street back behind the old, on account of widening the highway, so I took a right at the railway station, wound about here and there, and came to a clearing with some new streets and paths and a car park behind a building that looked like a hotel under reconstruction. I needed to think. I needed to think better. I needed some protein. On a concrete slab out back of the hotel, I saw an elderly couple chatting, seated upon a couple of milk crates, behind a mound of earth and rubble, an idle big yellow digger to their side. He was drinking a mug of something and she had a folded paper in her lap. When asked if they could recommend anywhere around here to eat, the man took another sip from his mug, jerked a finger behind him and said, Right here, if you can wait till noon, when the kitchen opens. While waiting, they told me a little bit more about what was going on. I'd heard right at least about the highway widening, and the strip of shops and businesses being relocated back a little. The hotel too was being completely refurbished. And then it was noon.

What am I doing here?

I start off with a dozen oysters, followed by a caesar salad. The oysters are not long out of the sea, and the salad is fresh and crisp and made as if seemingly determined to impress me. The dressing is superb, makes the taste buds dance. I check the menu again. Everything seems cheaper than what you'd expect, and of a far better quality than any pub I've come across since arriving in these parts. A bottle of pinot gris goes well with it all, that in turns goes well with an order of fish and chips and another bottle of pinot gris. The chips are big and cut by hand and cooked as if they couldn't be cooked any better. The fish is flathead and fine and lightly battered and the accompanying salad is firm and fresh and splashed with a balsamic type dressing that seems suited for competition, if there is a competition for that kind of thing, salad dressing king, or some such thing.

What am I doing here?

For dessert I have the creme brulee, which has real vanilla in it, and a couple of pistachio biscuits on the side. After I pay, and compliment the kitchen, I return to the car, and on the way back begin to remember Louis' aunt Annie making us biscuits when we were kids, the vast white walls of the penthouse where they lived, Charles the doorman who'd test our knowledge of the latest football scores, and other even more fleeting images that'd shoot past my inner vision as if in a race. Then unlocking the boot and climbing in the back of the car, I promptly fall asleep, with grateful thoughts of packing a mattress.

AN AFTERNOON ALL SPENT

JR - Starting with the one between her wedding band and pinkie - With a free hand and lipstick I'd gladly connect - Every mole on her body - Until together we'd reveal and hopefully comprehend - One of the secret words of God we'd lately come to read about - And which I knew, I really knew resided - Somewhere atop her most naked naked flesh - LA

HEADSHOTS

None of the photographs are pleasing.

I should probably press the shutter button less.

At least until I am more still, both inside and out.

It's like I'm waiting for some doom to tap me on the shoulder, scrape my healed over collar bone with a long black finger.

And afterwards, nothing I've seen can be seen on the screen.