Sky-diving

The neatness of Greg’s new digs was surprising. At Jackson Street the bed-sit had lacked the room to swing a cat. Here in the Commission place the bedroom alone was larger than the whole of the earlier space. On the wall above the couch three long fishing rods had been hung, all arcing across the span; the longest had to be twelve feet. None of them would have fitted under Greg’s bed in Jackson. They had been kept at his mum’s place in Mordy earlier, along with a good deal of the other items that had never been sighted previously. A tomahawk here sat on the fridge in the kitchenette, within easy reach of the front door through the opening in the wall. In Jackson it had been baseball bats and pick handles behind the door. On the shelf in the kitchen there was a curled photo of an unbelievable Greg in his thirties with black curly hair and long Latino moustache, beside a gal who could only have been the love of his life, Gaye dead at thirty-five. At Coffs Harbour Greg had slept a number of times on Gaye’s grave. In Jackson her photo had been kept out of sight somewhere, unless it had been consigned to mum’s garage. Eve on the Jackson Street bed was familiar—the figure in that framed photo, again not the photo itself. Greg told the young Italo butcher Andrea how Eve’s father had stripped her naked and beat her in the bath with a leather belt. Later when her parents had aged Greg had encouraged Eve to go back to see them while there was still time. The lads had played a preliminary game of euchre with a tenner stake. When Greg gave the word after a couple of hands Andrea went to the kitchen to prepare the fits, one for himself and one for Greg. The Broady Mick with four sons split from his wife was passing for the moment; he left later on his bicycle to score again, the arrangements passed between he and Greg too quick to catch. Without glasses Greg had needed Mick to do him. (Next week Mick would escort Greg to the Optometry College in Carlton for his eye test and new glasses.) With a belt wound around his bicep Mick had asked Greg to clench his fist while he searched for a vein on the outside of his forearm, the same place Andrea used in the kitchen. Mick’s first probes with the point of the needle missed the mark, success coming with a little spurt of blood. As before the hit, Andrea remained talkative afterward without any hint of the rush. The only change in Greg had been his pacing about the living-room and three or four times when he went to resume his seat on the couch there was hesitancy in the last lowering in place, as if he had been uncertain the support was still there. There was too some strictness in Greg afterward in his manner of speech, a kind of quiet deliberation. That dawned later thinking about the witnessing in the room. Greg had come across ten dead bodies in his time, most of them ODs. One memorable among them that Greg had mentioned before was the chap found one lunchtime in perfect business attire stretched out behind the fence at Jackson Street by the rubbish bins. Andrea had OD-ed himself four times over the journey from Italy-Spain-London and here. Before he had got on again he had made 110 sky dives, an accomplishment duly acknowledged by Greg. Odd was one story Greg had never told before of a break-in at a pharmacy on Toorak Road. The job had been done in company with the famous Shuggie, a litre bottle over of Charlie it might have been the pair cut out of the safe with oxy. Shuggie the looker who had everything, with the gift of the gab to boot, winning girls in any pub he entered. Afterward they had holed up for a week in the motel that had stood beside the squash courts on Canterbury Road with a couple of pros. Jackson Street was a little further up on the rise over Fitzroy Street; it had been wiser to keep away from home just then, or else Greg may not have taken up the place at that stage. Possibly there had been previous mention of this episode, buried and swamped in Greg’s rattle. Some of the streets in Footscray and around Vic Market found examples of the same kind of survivors as the old guys that night at the card game with the needles, figures who had endured trials and twists of fate that had marked them and dulled the lights of their eyes. In the airbrushing of the suburban setting, even in Spotty and the wider formerly industrial Inner West, the battles were hidden and the solidarities noticeably more flimsy.

Bower Bird

An hour and half again weeding cleared most of the path around the front and side of the house. One more similar session in the days ahead would see the labour done and a fine little garden surround delivered for the new tenants to enjoy. Each prospect through the windows both from the house and the studio gave a frame of greenery that always surprised like a sudden vista. 

Some laundry was also managed before leaving this morning, using the still warm water from the boiler after last night’s shower, the first for perhaps six or seven days in this early winter chill. In Carlisle Street before the café the three or four minutes among the loaves at Baker In the Rye gave a whiff of Ruski lands, just as at Japanese Rolls a welcome tang of Nippon. At a stretch wheat and rye fields, big skies, kerchiefed old crones and their men sunning themselves against the walls of the old houses with their walking sticks leaning by the doorway. As ever the lady at Baker appreciated the word of thanks in her own language and replied in kind. With the recent Muslim goatee that sprung from beneath the chin the woman may have had a passing thought of terrorism and bombing. 

            There was no Arthur now with whom to share the various loaves—the grains, the different grades of rye and sourdough, the Polish product that was occasionally chosen for Arth as a reminder. Arthur’s mother had been born in Australia, but the family had emigrated before WWI, escaping more than enough horror no doubt even without what followed. If the memory was correct, maternal Uncle John across the street had in fact served in the Australian Cavalry; another uncle had been the bootstudder for Footscray Football Club in their glory era.

It was the absence of Arthur which brought back the visit from the morning of the small, yellow-billed blackbird in the front garden. Over breakfast preparations at the kitchen window the darting movement across the path below had drawn attention. A day or two before the same bird had been sighted hopping over those pavers to take a drink from the saucer that sat beneath one of the pots at the end of the row. There was a fine bower created now in that space of filtered light from the tall, overhanging pittosporum along the fence line, fresh mulch that had been spread a few days ago radiating variegated tones, the glowing old red brick stepping stones, all the different pots holding the cacti and succulents. 

            The thirsty regular could not have been Arthur’s memorable twilight blackbird of the year before. Not likely. An autumn evening last year delivering the bread to Arthur the dark had come down early, Claude from next door roaming in the front yard and behind in Arthur’s pear tree a dark shape had been mistaken for a possum. No, that was no poss. That was a blackbird, Arthur countered after the briefest of looks behind. 

There had been some low calling earlier while we talked, it had been unclear at the time from where it had come. The error over the identification had led Arthur to tell of the warning the blackbirds sounded to their feathered friends at the presence of roaming cats. 

Arthur enjoyed the visits of the ginger Claude from over the side fence. You could tell by the way he looked in his direction when he passed and sometimes the way he sounded his name. Another black cat that also visited created some friction with Claude; once or twice it seemed Arthur had intervened to stop their fighting. Possums often passed across the rail behind Arthur while we talked evenings at his gate. An unruly pair had found a place for themselves in the roof of his front veranda, where they too sometimes fought for precedence. Under the roof of the house Arthur would not have been happy about the guests, but out of harm’s way in the veranda he was unconcerned; perhaps a tiny bit chuffed.

Previously Arthur had never mentioned anything about the bird life. 

If not quite the size of a possum, the figure in the pear that particular evening at Arthur’s was certainly far larger than the yellow-bill of the morning in the back garden.

            How exactly one had turned into a kind of bird man, loosely understood, was quite unclear. Early influencers were perhaps the Primary School DP, a man who like many in that era of teaching had been too busy for the classroom and devised various strategies to occupy the children during his long absences. In the case of this old Norm Smith lookalike—the legendary overcoated MFC coach, quintessential tall, lean Australian—the usual resort was plates of bird illustrations that were stood up at the front desk for us clueless artists to reproduce. The hardship of attempting to capture those forms, those features and proportions, set off a little panic like spelling tests and the other schoolroom trials.

Otherwise there was old Chika Zero the Dalmatian Royalist around in Paxton Street, with the large cage of budgerigars, parrots and galahs taking up the whole of the wall in his back garage. Remote and aloof from wife and son sitting in his kitchen chair, very much the testy lord who needed deft handling, at his wife’s prompting Chika Zero managed some fondness for his friend’s orphaned son. That a dour man like Chika Zero could be a bird enthusiast was more remarkable than the vivid creatures that greeted him from behind the wire in his garage.

            The yellow-bill’s slaking of thirst that morning had included a gesture that seemed a theatrical flourish at first. At the first motion of pulling back its head after its drink a call had been half expected, some kind of little jubilation as if for a toast. Bending to take one sip after another this birdie continued in the same way tilting back its head after each draught, its yellow pointer sharply thrusting. The yellow bill pointing up at the tree branches from where it had come two times, three times, four could not have belonged to the bird that had produced those warning calls from Arthur’s pear the year before. That other blackbird never was sighted; no bird of that size fitted in our neighbourhood. Even magpies and crows seemed of smaller proportion than the shadowy figure perched half way up the leafless pear on Arthur’s rear fence. This though certainly did not mean Arthur did not know what he was talking about.

Little Green Man

Viet woman on Barkly Street corner at the lights bending to pick up a stray leaf. Strange. Native people did not…stoop to romanticism of that kind. One of the plane trees had deposited from around the corner in French Street, the wind blowing over. There were two or three other leaves on that patch of bitumen. Had the woman chosen the finest, the shapeliest specimen? There had seemed to be a moment of deliberation. Peering around at the face she was not a young lass either…. Ah, no. Corona. For the crossing.

                        

                                                                                                       Footscray, Melbourne