Cydonia - Six

Six
Our big end arrives and our white tin has finally been resurrected. We thank Steve and the other mechanics with a crate of beer and almost all of our combined wages from cleaning the school and pulling the canoes through the gorge. We drink with them before leaving. I inhale the workshop one last time, savouring the oil and the rust and the grease. Terry tells more jokes and again we laugh when he gets them wrong. The scruffy dog licks my hand as I scratch his head. Eventually he closes his eyes.

We park the white tin in the Court car park and sit by the pool like always. Tabitha and Leon wave lazily, burning beautifully. Rob is absent, doing a days work for a farmer in the middle of nowhere. We talk about leaving. About getting in the van and heading north towards the sea. Day after tomorrow we decide. The start of a new week is a good time to move. We don’t have much money but enough for a drink tomorrow night, a send off with our friends.

We spend the rest of the day playing cards and sitting in the sun and the shade. My brother and Pete swim and splash in the pool, as ever I stay out. I’ve been in this country for nine months, this vast desert island, and not once have I set foot in water.

Rob comes back at dusk and he’s drunk already, fucked up on something. He proudly shows us what got him this way; a fat glass jar of enormous black prunes, pickled in a dark liquid alcohol that brings tears to our eyes with barely a sniff. Rob smiles as he stuffs another one into his mouth, mashing it between his teeth, black horror coating his gums and running slowly down his chin like tar. He offers them to us and we politely accept, reaching into his jar and fishing one out reluctantly before holding them in our hands for a while to examine them, their stench already meeting us. We bite into them and wish we hadn’t. They are warm and soft and taste like a warning. But Rob doesn’t care. He wanders off into the rising darkness with his jar under his arm and his face full of smiles. We drop our half eaten monstrosities to the ground. Ants swarm to them before fleeing in horror, some getting stuck in the sticky blackness, others running around in circles as if scared or hypnotised. Rob laughs in the distance.

We spend the evening playing cards and Scrabble, while watching American sitcoms on the small TV. Pete wins at Scrabble, he always does but now and again I come close. My brother goes to bed early. Pete goes for a shit. Leon reads a book by the pool. I play scrabble with Tabitha. We don’t say much, we look at our letters and the TV and now and again we laugh at the words we make. I will not miss her when we leave this place. I am comfortable in my loneliness. It’s never easy to be in her beauty. After a ten minute wait she makes a three letter word and we laugh. Her teeth, her skin, her eyes.

Leon and Tabitha go to bed. Pete returns and we sit in front of the TV. I smoke cigarettes and drink Diet Coke, trying always to blow my poison away from him. My brother returns, his hair still sleeping, his eyes red and alarmed. He tells us that Rob has come back and is standing in the middle of the room acting crazy. Crazy how, we ask? He shakes his head. He isn’t sure what to say. We sit and watch the TV. Eventually we all get up and walk towards our room, not sure what we’ll find there.

I open the door quietly and step inside, immediately engulfed by the smell of Rob and his prunes. He stands in the middle of the room, in the middle of the darkness. I walk to my bed and as I pass him he turns to me. He fixes me with sharp eyes, eyes well attuned to the surrounding darkness. I’ve been talking to Satan, he tells me. I nod, not sure what to say. But don’t worry, I beat him, I fuckin’ beat him. I nod again, good. I walk past and sit on the edge of my bed, taking off my shoes and shorts. My brother climbs above me and settles nervously into his crying springs. Pete grabs his toilet bag and shuffles quickly into the protection of the bathroom, the little latch locking like it matters. I lie back in bed with my head in crossed hands as I watch Rob in the darkness. He stares forward, poised, alert, ready. He talks and he mumbles. Told you doesn’t matter now…I am…I don’t care…I’ll fucking beat you again…you fuckin’ bastard…you fuckin’ rotten bastard. Pete sneaks out of the bathroom and up his creaky ladder. He lies down and turns away from the centre of the room, away from Rob. My brother whispers to me with advice. Get your knife, he tells me, just in case, put it under your pillow. I don’t get my knife, but my brother has his, under his pillow.

Rob stays quiet for a while. My brother falls asleep though doesn’t snore. Rob stands there still, forced to face what scares him. It scares me too. Rob might be drunk and high and hallucinating. Rob might be insane. Rob might be standing in front of Satan. All options scare me though especially the last. I lay there so quietly because I am afraid that Rob will notice me and talk to me. That he may bring Satan with him. I am really very scared. I wish I was home, ten thousand miles away from this place. My breathing is getting tighter. I shall not reach for my inhaler. I will lie here and I will quietly gasp for breath until I die. I will lie here and die before alerting my presence to Rob and to Satan.

I close my eyes.

When I open them it is morning and the sun in filling the room with light and never have I felt happier to feel it with me and around me. Rob is gone, not on the floor, not in his bed. Satan’s gone too, of that I’m sure. I turn noisily over in my bed, springs aching below me. I get up and take a piss. Before climbing back into bed I look at my brother, sleeping there, one hand under his pillow. I climb under my covers and turn to face the wall. Sleep takes me as the room gets warmer.

We surface past noon and unite by the pool. Rob is gone, no one has seen him. We talk about his madness and his conversation with Satan. We hope he won’t do it again, not on our last night.

We start packing, getting the van loaded up for our journey north. We have been here a long time but it feels like longer. We walk to the supermarket to buy beer for tonight. It’s hot as hell and we’re all thinking about the windows down and the cool sea breeze.

As we slept so late the night comes quickly. We drink beer at the Court, at the pool, my brother, Pete, Leon and Tabitha. Rob has not returned. We drink and I smoke and we laugh. We talk about Katherine and the gorge and the days we spent together doing nothing. As we get drunker we feel closer. Closer than we really are. But that’s alright. We’re drunk and having a good time and these friends we’ve made will stay with us. New comers arrive, bags over shoulders, sweat upon their brows. They pass us and they watch us. Together. They wonder what Katherine will be like, how long they might have to stay here.

We go back to the same places. The bar we sang Faith is quieter tonight, there is no singing, only drinking. But that’s fine, that’s what we do, we drink. By the time we end up in Domino’s nightclub we’re much drunker than we’ve been in a long time, certainly since we arrived in Katherine. There are no inhibitions this time on the dance floor, no jealousy, no rivalry. We are drunk enough to simply dance and not care if we are making fools of ourselves. The music is loud and bad and we dance until we’ll dry.

We play pinball and air hockey, arcade machines and table football. We drink more, we dance more. I smoke and I smoke and I smoke. My lungs cry out like the springs on our beds. My breathing gets tighter. My brother gets his photograph taken with a fat, black faced woman. He puts his arm around her and waggles his tongue, pretending to find her attractive. The woman smiles. Pete tries to get through a door he’s not supposed to and a sweating, utterly uninteresting doorman takes him by the collar and throws him back towards us. We rally together like it means something, standing firm in cloudy revolution. Another doorman and we’re all thrown out into the warmth of the night and the white light of the full moon. Our last night and the moon is full.

We walk back to the Court side by side, like a horseless posse we are close with unmentioned affection. At the pool Tabitha says goodnight, goodbye. We hug her and we kiss her, wanting to hug her and kiss her for longer than she lets us. She goes to bed and we sit by the pool for a moment.

Leon walks us towards our room and on the concrete outside we find Rob, lying on his back. His eyes are half open, his chest rises slowly, his green t-shirt is soiled with the black blood of prunes. Instead of trying to help him we laugh at him. We get our camera and we take photographs with him, we pose with him. My brother and Pete and Leon drop their shorts and I take photographs of the white arses beside his face. My brother takes his glasses and holds them by his arse. I take photographs. We are all laughing like it’s the funniest thing we have ever seen. Another person appears, we haven’t seen him before, we do not know him. He produces toothpaste and soon Rob has a bright green moustache and two bright green eyebrows. I take photographs and we laugh. The toothpaste is the same colour as his t-shirt. It goes on and on and it does not cease to be funny. I take a million photographs. Rob barely moves. He might be almost dead. But it’s so funny I don’t know if we care. We eventually tire and decide to sleep. We say our goodbyes to Leon, hugs and handshakes, all the time Rob below us on the warm concrete. We leave him there.

We’re up with the sun that next morning, our final morning with Katherine. The concrete is cool under our feet as we pad to the kitchen for toast and coffee and cereal. Rob is gone, nothing left of him but a dark stain where he lay. I shower quietly in the room, leaving my brother and Pete by the still of the pool. Rob’s bed is made and his bag is gone. Under the hot water my body shakes and my head moans. I try to think about Rob, about what happened, about what we did, about where he went. But my hangover is all conquering. It demands my attention. I reluctantly succumb.

We all feel the same, but of course I know my hangover is worse than theirs, just as they know theirs is worse than mine. As my brother showers, Pete lies in bed again. I sit by the pool. I shouldn’t smoke a cigarette but I do. The taste and the smell remind of last night, of all I smoked and of I all drank. And most importantly, of all I saw.

I stare into the barely moving water, asking it to sooth me. You have never been inside me it whispers, why should I start now?

It’s almost an hour later but eventually the white tin is packed and we’re ready to go. My brother drives, Pete in the middle, myself by the window, best seat in the house. The key is turned and the tin opens his eyes and his throat and he sings our departure without cough or hiss. Our heads still hurt and our stomach’s still churn but the song of the tin is beautiful. We leave the Court, our home and prison, it dips out of sight in our rear view mirrors and we expect never to see it again. I tell it goodbye and thank you but I’m not sure what for. The sun rises behind.

Katherine sleeps as we leave, just as she did when we arrived. We pass the supermarket, the cinema, the karaoke bar, Domino’s nightclub and lastly the garage. There isn’t much else to feel connected with.

We drive out of town and back on to the road to the north. The north we should have reached a long time ago. The north that still waits for us now.