Cydonia - Four

Four
We spend two days doing nothing. We talk to our new friends, we sit in the sun and the shade, we drink beers and smoke cigarettes, we play cards, we eat dinner, we hear nothing from Roger. I discover a cinema, tucked away behind the hot street in the cool shadow of the supermarket. I buy a ticket and a bag of cold sweet popcorn and sit down to watch a film about a group of people stuck on an alien world, hunted by flying creatures that only come out when it’s dark. And there’s about to be a two day eclipse. A black faced wanderer shuffles in half way through, he asks me for money, I decline, he asks me for popcorn, I hand him the rest of the sticky bag. He mumbles thanks and takes a seat two rows in front of me. He smells terrible, raw skin leaking stale beer, sweat thick like glue, breath heavy as hell, all slowly cooked by the midday sun. But he’s not as bad as the dead thing in the bin at the school. He’s jasmine and lavender compared to that. He watches the film for a while, slowly and methodically filling his warm mouth with cold popcorn. He falls asleep eventually, oblivious to the explosions and the gunfire and the shrieking evil. The film ends and I leave him there to rest.

I’m back at the Court only ten minutes when a tall German shudders on to the scene like a stop-motion spider. He has wild blonde hair and long long legs that don’t get any thicker from top to bottom. His wrinkled face belies his aggressively youthful vigour, he spits words across the pool in German, hoping they’ll land on understanding ears, they don’t. He changes to basic English, transforming himself from intimidating reaper to cartoon. Zere iz employment een ze gorge. After five minutes of battling his zeees and achhhs we understand. He has a job for 10 healthy young people, pulling large canoes up Katherine Gorge. The scenery will be spectacular and there will be payment and lunch. First come first served. My brother, Pete, Rob, Leon, Tabitha and me. The German is called Werner, he seems happy that half the workforce has been snapped up so quickly. Two Jews arrive. Werner examines them briefly and nods. Eight now. Two Japanese arrive. He looks them up and down then shakes his head, not strong enough. They retire to the corner, feeling puny and excluded. He finally finds his final two; a Spaniard with a beard and a Danish girl with the legs of a mountaineer. The ten assembled, Werner looks us over, rest now, he tells us, for tomorrow will be hard. Five-thirty pickup. Jesus Christ.

We don’t drink or stay up late. Five thirty is unforgiving. We go to our beds and we sleep. Even Rob, no ghosts tonight.

My brother wakes me, shaking my arm roughly, hurting it even. We shuffle about the dorm, blindly sinking legs into shorts and arms into t-shirts. It’s cold and its dark and for the first time in a long time I want the sun to rise and blast me with its fire.

Cigarettes and coffee by the pool, Leon and Tabitha huddled close, Rob by their side, staring into the gentle movements of the tepid blue water. The Jews and the Spaniard and the Dane are a mixed bag of smiles and vacant eyes. It’s so very early.

Werner arrives right on time in a shiny white mini bus with his name on the side. We step aboard, some willing, some not. The sun is still not up and the bus’ imitation leather seats are hard and cold as the thin metal walls around us leak heat with a strained and echoed moan. We trundle off, through the still sleeping streets and into the wilds, none of us talking. We either close our eyes or watch sleepily as the changing landscape bleeds past.

When we reach the gorge it's light and already a degree of warmth has been added to the air around us. We’re introduced to two Maoris, giant men with battle scar faces and hands the size of clocks. We’re led quickly to the base of the gorge where we find the large canoes waiting, the ones that we must drag upstream to their unspecified destination. Werner wasn’t lying, the gorge is spectacular and the day is hard. The water is fast and the boats are heavy, we struggle slowly with our great cargo, chest high in cold, our breaths frequently snatched from us. And all the time Werner follows on the shore with his long legs and his whipcrack tongue, shouting in German, motivating us with fear. The Maoris are magnificent. Never losing their footing, never tumbling and slipping in the water like idiots. They pull the boats and their great, tattoos heave, bulging, flexing and distorting. They could do this job themselves, we are here for their amusement.

But we try. We give it our all. We heave and distort too, we shout obscenities at the water and the boats and the gorge. We slip and we bleed and we sweat. The sun now high drips fire but we don’t even notice as the rushing water is cool and beautiful. We are one, this group. My brother heaves, his teeth gritted, his thick arms tense like steel, close to ripping. I heave with him, beside him, I grit like he does. We are cowboys, heroes, friends. These boats will not push themselves.

Lunch comes and we collapse to the shore, weak and broken. Werner’s wife appears, a surprisingly attractive Australian woman with blonde hair and green eyes. We devour sandwiches and pasta, preparing ourselves for the afternoon and the pain it will bring. We do our best to avoid staring at Tabitha, her wet clothes clinging to her like a second skin. We are bonded though. There is no doubt about that. We laugh and joke and those who smoke smoke. This beats cleaning windows and dead things in bins. There are no foul smells out here. Today we sweat blood.

With the current faster, the water higher and our bodies weaker, the afternoon is even harder. We toil through the wet, at points the water reaches our necks, some of us are worried now, I am worried now. But there’s no turning back, we’re out here in the water and it’s rising to our necks but there’s nothing we can do about it. So we keep pulling. We pull until our hands beg red for mercy and our legs cry cold with pain. But we ignore them and carry on, for that is all we can do.

When the water finally starts to fall and the current begins to slow we mutter our relief as we stagger onward towards the finishing line. Five thirty am is a lifetime past. We could not be more awake than we are. We are more awake then we have ever been. Five thirty am is nothing but smoke. The here and now is all that there is. My bother, Pete, Leon, Tabitha, the Jews, the Spaniard, the Dane, the Maoris and the German on the shore. Our feet are blistered and our hands are numb. But our hearts and our eyes are filled with something else. Something that makes us keep going. We’ll pull these fucking boats to China.

We celebrate that night in the pub, pissing most of our wage into empty bottles. But we don’t care, we worked for it and we deserve to piss it wherever we want. The pub is white, no black faces in here. It’s too bright, jarring light burns from above like a laboratory. The locals in here are used to our types, faces from all over the world, faces that don’t belong in their town but whose money sustains it. We drink and we laugh. We talk about the day, the water, the blood, the blisters, the Maoris, the German. We sing karaoke. My brother and I duet Faith, both of us barely signing, just slurring out the little moving lyrics admits coughs of laughter. The locals watch us politely, not amused, not affronted. My brother stops singing Faith and starts signing a football song instead. Pete boos. I laugh. Singing with my brother is fun.

We end up in Katherine’s nightclub, a little shit stink on the arse end of town called Domino’s. Black and white in here, dancing to bad music, drinking cheap beer. We dance too, all of us except Rob, who instead watches us from the bar with an awkward smile on his face. Leon makes Tabitha laugh, pulling moves and shouting their names; The lawnmower! The Runaway Train! The Fence Painter! The Werewolf! She laughs and laughs and laughs. And as we do to, our dull blues burn green.

As we drag the night further my head begins to ache, too much drink, too much smoke. We play air hockey and pinball, all the time poisoning ourselves further. Rob begins to fade, his eyes glassing and his mouth hanging open to the wind. We drink and smoke more but rob is gone now, still with us but gone.

Closing time and we enter the night with great breaths of fresh air and clean sound. We are all a mess, in one way or another, shambling, stumbling, laughing and holding each other. Rob shambles worst, behind us like an unwanted smell, like the awkward friend you never asked for. If he lay down and died we would carry him home and cry for ourselves.

Back in the Court and we find our beds so quickly, like our lives depended on it. We leave Rob, sitting by the pool, his glass eyes and hanging mouth contemplating vaguely. Within minutes my brother is a bull, his great heaving waves cascading around the room like wild horses. Others in the room tut and signal with sighs, hoping I will slay the sound but I don’t. We have worked hard today. The bull can sleep how he likes. Pete sleeps in his clothes, tossing and turning violently, metal springs screaming under his weight. More tuts. A muttered word. Spanish. I smile. I imagine Leon in bed with Tabitha. I hope he’s too drunk to get it up, I hope he tried and he failed. I hope she told him it was all right and he nodded with shame.

Rob enters the room. He sits on his bed and mutters to himself. He pauses and mutters again, and again. The same conversation with the ghost. The others don’t tut this, this is different, better to ignore this, turn over. But I turn towards him and I listen. He stands up, facing the wall and he stares for a long time. I’m not afraid or you, he says. My brother turns over and with a snort falls silent. Pete settles down, the springs sigh quietly. I breathe slowly. Robs starts to sob. Whatever he isn’t afraid of isn’t afraid of him either. Eventually he lies down, still sobbing quietly into the corner. Think of the gorge, Rob, we pulled those boats for a million miles. Our sweat was blood.