GEORGE, WATCHING

George was a watcher.  It hadn’t always been this way – at one stage he was an observer, sharp, astute, honed to perceive, he never missed a cue.

But for now he was a watcher, standing on the corner, his peripheral vision seeing everything, but judging nothing.  From his allocated position he could see the traffic – the vehicles, the townspeople, the children (the real people), the birds, and even the clouds – as it passed him by.  A bit like life, really, constantly passing him by.

He had been something once - or so they thought.  He had climbed his way through life, got to the very top, and found himself alone, as if, when you get to the highest places there is nobody home.

They thought he was a hero, motivated to persevere, to achieve, to go it alone and succeed, against all odds.  And it was the odds that really put him there in the first place.

They had joined in and celebrated his achievements, but only after he had paid the price.  Nobody was there to give him a hand up when he needed it most, to take the slack and share the load, or catch him when he fell.

Ironically it was those ‘odds’ that kicked him off, got him going.  Yes we are all born different – but some more different than others and the taunting quickly grew to be more than he could handle.  Some buckle under the pressure of teasing and ridicule, and others become more resilient, eventually finding their style, their pathway through life.

Now, standing on the corner, watching, he had all the time in the world to contemplate, to re-view.

People seldom even noticed him standing there anymore, it had been so long, he had almost become part of the scenery.  So he had the chance now to stand, silent, still, and just watch.

What did he think?  Did he think? Those were the questions he had never been able to answer. Even as a child “think” meant nothing to him.  What it might mean had always eluded him.

Class teachers at school had berated him.  “What do you think boy?  Do you think boy?  Aren’t you a little odd boy?” – and from this came the names and the taunting of the other children  “Hey Odds!  Do you think Odds?”

He was fully aware that had he hardened up at the time he would never be standing here now, stony-faced, unmoving.  Yes, he knew he was different, mainly because he wasn’t the same, because he couldn’t BE the same – but that was as far as he could go. He wasn’t like the other kids, and didn’t want to be like the other kids, but what the difference was, was beyond his understanding.

Early in his years he found himself driven by their teasing – driven into the loneliness, the peacefulness of the bush.  Here ‘alone’ was different from ‘lonely’.  Here he wasn’t different, he just ‘was’ and the acceptance of the bush allowed him to accept himself.

In the bush he had found the hills, and in the hills he had found the mountains.  And in the mountains he found elevation, and in the elevation he found perspective. 

For too long he had been looked down on, and felt beaten up.  Where the rigors of school-work and the drudgery of home-work had taken the life out of living, the altitude of the mountains, the clear, thin air, allowed him to breathe and to be.

Finally alone, he could go beyond, he could push back the barriers, he could conquer mountains.

And when he slipped and fell they never saw that it was them that had driven him to it.  In the safety of his sudden death they turned him into a hero.  They had driven him into the mountains, then carved him from that same stone.  They said he loved to be there, he lived for the mountains, that they were his challenge.  They never understood just how steep a sanctuary can be.

First he was their scape-goat, now their hero, ‘local boy made good’. Locked into this marble statue, forever watching, he had conquered the mountains, but never his dys-lexia.

(Dedicated to all Dys-lexics and Diesels – whatever their outcome.)

THE RIGHT TO REMAIN SILENT

The counsellor was looking at him, like she was waiting for something.  Just sitting there, eyeballing him. He knew she had been talking, mainly to Janet, but now she was looking at him as if he was meant to come up with something. A moment ago his mind had been a movie, a process of pictures, sorting a complication in the workshop, but now he was doing his best to replay her voice, what she had been saying over the last few seconds. Nothing, no words, sentences, questions, nothing that might give him a clue as to what to say.

He could sense that he was meant to contribute something, say something, but her look was more than expectant, it was, more, judgemental. He looked back up at her face and shrugged one shoulder, as he usually did. “Uh, I don’t know, um, I’m not sure”.

The counsellor’s eyes shifted back to Janet, who was rolling her eyes and making those dammed ‘dch’ noises again, but her head was still aimed straight at him.

“Are you with us at all Gordon, are you taking this seriously?  You’re on the brink of losing this relationship and all that goes with it, and I can tell, you’re not even listening.  I really get the impression that you’re not even interested”.

He took a long deep breath, then reactively added to it, held, and released it in jerky spasms.  “I’m sorry, ah, um, she’s said that . . .  Well maybe she should just go, and, that’s best for her”.

He knew he wasn’t making sense with his words, and at a different level he knew he wasn’t making sense of this whole situation either.  Days later his mind would say ‘Go see a counsellor, talk about not talking! Jeeze man!’ but right now it was blank – no words, no thoughts, nothing to say.  How can you say something if there’s no words in your head!’

She was at it again.  “You must have some thoughts on all of this Gordon, you must know how you feel”.  Her voice was softer, she was trying the easy, easy approach.  “Look, I’ll ask Janet to go outside for a while, maybe it’s hard for you to talk with her here, listening.”

“Yea, I’m going out to the car for a smoke.  Good luck!” She took her anger with her, but enough still swirled through his brain where it had been eating at him for months.

He stared at the floor, or at least in that direction, but his eyes saw nothing.  His pulse was up, there was a pressure in his head, but that same blank space stayed – like a white-out. His lips and his mouth were trying to make a word, but nothing came. He hated being so dumb, so stupid, not able to say something useful.  He cared.  Of course he cared – and he was scared, scared of not being what she wanted.  She, Janet, the counsellor, Janet’s mother even, they all wanted words.  “Say something, anything!  Just say something!” And the more they yelled, the more they demanded, the less he could find anything to say.

All these years they had told him how caring, how sensitive he was.  How wonderfully creative and artistic he was, and how successful he could be – ‘if he just got on with it, stopped being such a damned perfectionist, and got his stuff out there on the market’.

He knew he had stuffed up, lost some good clients and a lot of money, but he couldn’t put stuff out there if it wasn’t ‘right’.  Hours and hours at night after day, he worked and worked but couldn’t get it right, not right enough to be happy with it.  He was tired, grumpy and depressed.  He kept away from the booze, ’cause that had cost him his last relationship, but now the energy drinks were eating into his gut with a pain that gave him nightmares at night.

Way back in his school days a teacher had told him “Either you’ll find a good woman who will be the making of you, or you’ll be the most brilliantly creative no-hoper on the street.” The bastard was right both ways.

“She’s a lovely woman”, she’d started again “and she’s lucky to have you.”

‘Same old, same ol . . .’ Gordan lifted one eyebrow and looked up, warily at the counselor. ‘Is she for real?’ 

“You’re surprised to hear me say that, aren’t you?”

‘Yep, for real’ he thought, but just looked at her, and said nothing.  It was his turn to just look, and wait, to see what she would say next.

”Just like there’s all sorts of women” she began slowly, ”there’s all sorts of men. In this business, relationship counselling, you get to see the whole range.  And although I had a bit of a go at you back there, I know that this ‘talk it all through’ stuff doesn’t really suit men as much as it seems to suit women.  But Janet needed to hear me challenge you like that.  She needs to know that I am not just going to give you an easy 'out'. She needs to know that I am giving you as big a challenge as I have given her.  That surprises you doesn’t it?  You thought I was on her side, yes?  No, it’s not for me to take sides, my job is to help the two of you find a way to meet each other without loss.”

She paused, thinking her way to her next offering. 

“My husband isn’t always as convinced of the value of counselling as I am.  The other night he challenged me on what I do.  He said, in almost these words, ‘Women seem to be born with a brain that is wired for talking.  They talk more than men, they use more words than men to say the same thing, and they deal with their problems by talking them out – usually all at the same time.’  You can see he is a bit of a cynic.”  She raised both her eyebrows in mock resignation.  “But then he stunned me.  He said, ‘Listen to the words, the words in the old sayings.  If men have a problem they ‘work it out’”. She stopped. “Just think what you do if there is something bothering you – do you go and chat to your hairdresser?”

‘Not bloody likely’ he thought, and they both grinned at the thought of it.

“No, I bet you ‘work it out’.  You stick your problem into the farthest back corner of your mind – your unconscious mind – and you go and do some man-work – and while you ‘work it out’, so does your unconscious brain. You just work, and you let your system deal with it, while you do the things that your masculinity makes you good at. At least that is my husband’s take on it, and I wonder if he’s not got a point”.

“The hard part is, that in this world full of PC rules and stuff, people tend to think that, except for the wobbly bits, men and women are basically the same – that their brains work the same.”

He was grateful for her pause, as he reflected on a hundred ways that that applied.

“But it is so obvious that our brain wiring is different, and as in this case, hugely different.  Janet wants to do it the woman way, and she expects that you can, and will do it the same way, by talking it through, over, and out.  When that doesn’t work for you, she thinks you are avoiding, denying, being obstinate, playing power-games, playing silence games – there are all sorts of explanations for it.  The real danger is that we choose to believe the explanation that suits us best. That’s a normal thing to do, but it is dangerous.”

She was speaking slowly, as if she was thinking through what she was saying for the first time. This worked for him, and he was suddenly aware that he was following her train of thought, that he understood what she was saying - for him a rare experience.

He nodded, and slowly some words came. “The more she talks, asks questions, wants answers, the harder it is for me.”

“For you to, what?” she probed.

“To talk, to find words, to tell her things.  I know she wants me to talk, and sometimes I can, a bit, but when I can’t she just thinks I’m making it difficult.”

“Tell me if this is not my business, but did you hate school, and, did you find learning to read and write really hard?”

“Sort of, ’cause at school I was really dumb.”  His head dropped, and he whispered to the floor, “and I still hate reading, can’t hardly write at all.”

She let the silence linger out. 

“And yet you are known as one of the most creatively successful artists in your field”.

“But, that doesn’t stop me from being dumb.”

“True, but difficulty with language doesn’t actually mean that you are dumb either.  My husband is an extraordinarily intelligent man, develops high-tech security systems for industry, but when his mum writes to him he has to get me to read her letters.  He can read the technical stuff, but not novels or anything that has emotional content.  He says it is his personal form of dyslexia.”

Janet’s less-than-gentle knock on the door abruptly stopped the conversation.

“I want you two to go home now, and I will see each of you on your own next time.  In the meantime, just one instruction; No questions or discussion between you about today’s session. Gordon, same time next week then?”

He nodded, “Yeah, I’d like that”.

ERIC ON FIRE

Eric was alone.  That was normal, he always felt alone, alone, and vulnerable.  This time he was lying on his bed, looking at the ceiling in the falling light. Clean, groomed, and freshly shampoo’d.

(“Shampoo” he thought,”What a silly name for hair-wash stuff.”  He said it out loud “Sham poo, pretend poo”. Somebody had told him that the soldiers had brought that stuff back from India after the war, as well as ‘pyjamas’.  He didn’t think they had wars in India because that was where the peace religions came from, didn’t they?  “Anyway”, he thought “that explains everything” – but he didn’t quite know what he meant by that either.)

His room was even more tidy than usual.  Everything was in its right place, and he knew where the right place for everything was.  If it wasn’t in its right place it would be in the wrong place, and then it would be lost.  “Lost” would be out of his control, 'and that’s where the fear kicks in'.

Washed in the shower, scrubbed clean like new, his ‘good’ shoes hung from the brass window strut, almost dry.

Hours of thinking, planning ahead – got to have clean undies, best T-shirt, fresh off the ‘line, almost no wrinkles. His treasured collection of old war comics carefully packed into a carton, tied with a bit of twine, and named with his best printing:   ERICS.

He’d even remembered to cut and scrub his finger nails, and had a bunch of fresh mint from behind the shed – ready to rub over his hands.  Petrol is good for cleaning grease, but it stinks later, and somebody said that it can go right into your skin and make cancer.

The tractor shed was locked – the boss locked it after feeding the dogs each night.  Townie kids, hoons, had come out and stolen fuel, and used it to do flame-outs down at the old concrete road-bridge.  He and the boss had seen the burn-out marks when they took the heifers to the grazing block across the river.  Even the stock were upset by that stink.

He didn’t have his own key, hadn’t worked here long enough.  Not that this boss was ever likely to let him have one, he didn’t seem to trust Eric to do anything, and didn’t seem to like him either.

He picked on Eric, and made him look stupid when they were at the sales with other farmers, and even at home in front of his wife and son. He kept on telling everybody how dumb and stupid Eric was, and that if he had one more brain it would be lonely!  Eric just smiled when everybody laughed, because he didn’t get the joke.

It had been bad right from the beginning.  Although the boss had known that Eric hated school and was a bit of a ‘behaviour problem’ (well, he had to do something while at school, so he used to have fun, didn’t he – and that always meant that he was in trouble), when he found out that Eric couldn’t read or write he called Eric a “dumb dyslexic”, and made Eric learn how to write his own name, in capital letters.  It worked, but Eric hated him for it ‘cause it was so hard, and anyway he didn’t even know what that dumb dik, diks, however you say it word meant. What he did like was that this was a place to live, they fed him, and he had something to do – which was way better than living in the Children’s Home.

It had been a bit bad before, but it all got worse that day when he got things wrong.  The boss’s ‘very sophisticated’ wife and her spoilt kid were getting ready to take the ute and his motor-cross bike to the ‘Nationals’, and the boss had told Eric to fuel the ute up. He did, then put it away, ready for them the next morning. Somehow, when the ute broke down the next day, in the middle of no-where, they all blamed Eric.  Spoilt son never got to the Nationals, said that there was petrol in the diesel, and the boss wouldn’t even let him drive the ute any more.

The bit about the hay paddock didn’t help either. Again they all said it was his fault, but like with the ute, all he did was what the boss had told him.  “Get on the quad. Go up the race past the barn. Don’t open the gate by the cattle-stop, open the next one”. That was all cool, but when the boss brought the cows down for milking the next morning shit, fur and blood were flying. “The fricken cows were in the hay paddock all night! Fifteen acres of standing hay gone! I told you ‘don’t open the gate by the cattle-stop’ and whadda ya do, you put all the flaming cows into the crop!”

So now even the quad was out of bounds, and like the dog, he had to walk everywhere.

If he had parents he would get them to come and get him, but he didn’t even have that.  He knew there had to be a dad out there somewhere, probably big and strong with tats and a Harley, who could deal with this boss, but the social worker had said that mum never let on who it was.  But she was gone now too.  She was in the wrong place at the wrong time after a party when he was just two.  Except for some leery photos he hardly even knew what she’d looked like.

In the dark he’d seen the car-lights as the boss, spoilt brat kid and poncy wife came home from school prize-giving.  “Praise-giving” they called it. The boss had been on and on about taking the trailor to bring home all the trophies  “Winner of this”, “Best at that”, “Highest achievement in recorded history”, “Most goals scored ever”, “Most promising student”, “Mr Popular 2012”.  Eric reckoned the trailor was really needed to carry their big heads and bloated egos.

She was so proud of her ‘little prince’, and made a real point of letting Eric know that they were a family of social standing, of ‘class’. He understood her message, sort of, but didn’t know what she meant when she talked about being so ‘sophisticated’. In the end he found a dictionary in the town library, and asked the librarian to look it up.  She said there were lots of meanings, but he liked the one that said “An elaborate sham, to make false by worldly means”. After that he always agreed with the boss’s wife, and told her that she really was, very sophisticated.

It was now late and the lights in the main house finally went out. He intended to lie there and wait, even sleep a bit before going out, but his body, as if it had a mind of its own, wouldn’t wait.

He had imagined, after all his planning and rehearsing, that he would be calm, cool, collected, like some angry dude on the TV, but a pulsing nervous excitement ran through him like a flooded river.

Moving more quickly than he intended he crept across the back porch, down past the washing line, to the outhouse, the “long-drop of your very own – not even the dog would go there to dump” as the boss had told him on his first day.  That suited Eric just fine, and gave him a secret hiding place, a place where no one else would ever look.  He kept his dirty magazines there, and the orange twenty litre fuel can was safely stashed there too, hidden under the box-lid, undiscovered for over a month.

He could hear the boy racers – the ones the boss had blamed for stealing the can – doing their drags out on the main road.  Later they would be down at the bridge doing flame-outs, and maybe even torching a car. He reckoned they would get the blame for everything tonight – that’s why he chose Saturday.

Holding his breath he lifted the lid and pulled the full can from beside the stinking hole. It was heavy, needing both hands, and he forgot to catch the lid before it crashed back down on his toe - braced against the edge of the box. It made no sound, but his toe screamed in sharp agony.

Bumping the heavy container against his legs he made his way to the back of his cottage, hid the fuel under an old sack and moved inside. His pulse and his pain made listening impossible, but no lights came on in the main house to show that he had been heard. He didn’t feel scared or nervous, he didn’t really feel anything, but his pulse stayed at peak revs.

The grass, long and slippery from the wet weather, allowed him to half carry, half drag the can over to, then around the bosses house.  With the cap off, slurping fuel into the grass he managed the task easily, and as far as he could tell, quietly, eventually leaving a trail of fuel right around the house where the sleeping family lay.

In his planning he knew it would be stupid to use his own lighter, so he had a box of matches, ready, in one of his pockets, if, he  could  just  find  them. Fumbling in the dark, hands sticky with fuel and nervous sweat, he couldn’t push them far enough into his pocket to locate the matches. With his tension rising with his pulse racing Eric ran for the cottage.

‘Cigarette lighter, kitchen bench’ – he could see it clearly in his mind’s eye.  ‘No lights’ he warned himself, and ran his hands along the bench scattering knives, forks and spoons, his mess from last week.  He recognised the lighter as it shot from his grip, itself now slippery with sweat and fuel, off the edge of the bench.

At school he had been known for his lightening reactions. This time his reactions didn’t let him down as he instinctively knew where to intercept the lighter in mid-flight. The problem was rather in the hard edge of the stainless bench-top where it met the significantly softer edge of his rapidly descending right eyebrow.

Streaming blood, dazed, but locked into an action-plan Eric stumbled back out the door, the orange can indicating where the combustable fluid lay soaking in the grass.  Several attempts, thumb slipping before gripping, finally a flame.  He remembered the fuel on his clothes and relied on his lightning reactions to get away from the flames before he too became part of the planned outcome.

Bending quickly, arm and lighter extended to the fuel, he made the connection and leaped away with the agility of a startled cat.

His mind changed gear into an agonising slow-motion. He was aware of his body slowly uncoiling as he sprang up, away, to his left in the darkness. Eric saw the glow of the lighter falling, still burning, into the pool of fluid, then a blinding flash beginning from a tiny spark in the centre of his vision, exploding outwards to total white, then nothing. A semi-recognition of an impact, hard meeting hard.

              …………………………………………………………………………….

The ‘hoon’ had been dispatched to get more diesel. They had already used up what they had, and needed more for a worthwhile night. Town is too far away, so the local farmer’s shed would be worth a stealthy visit. Car quietly parked down the road, walk the last few hundred metres, one five litre jerry-can of diesel coming up.

The night was pitch-black so the nose led the way.  Yep, he could smell diesel, there would be a tank near the tractor shed.  A house on the right, another building off to the left in the darkness – and he froze.  Right beside him in the dark, a person, crouching, a spark, a small flame, then an eruption of action coming straight at him, a blinding light, a searing pain, and, nothing.

          ………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Eric was aware that it was the boss’s voice.  It was laughing, it seemed happy, and that somehow was wrong, not as it should be. He heard it again, it was speaking, laughing, but there was nothing to see.  He tried to move and realised that he was restrained, flat on his back, but somehow comfortable.

“So you’re still alive are you, you master of the head-butte, you midnight hero”.  The voice faded as Eric’s brain closed down again.

              ……………………………………………………………………………………….

The story that Eric eventually heard (and he wasn’t into arguing) was that the boss had been woken by the familiar smell of diesel. Peering into the darkness from the kitchen window he had seen a figure, a spark, and then heard the horrible crack as two human cranium met with considerable impact. Under torchlight he discovered Eric, unconscious, lying across the similarly unconscious body of ‘the hoon’.

The hoon had woken shortly after the police arrived, but had no memory at all of what had happened, and no idea even where he was.  The evidence however spoke fairly clearly for itself, as he was well known from his previous interactions with the law, and he was thus duly removed.

Eric’s hospital stay “under observation” for three days was a total buzz, with the staff treating him according to his ‘hero’ status. The boss had asked for “no news reporters please”, and kept the whole affair at a very low profile.

In spite of what he knew about it all, a sense of legitimacy developed in Eric after that.  The boss and family treated him with grateful respect – they recognised that they owed their lives to his courage and action – and now included him as one of the family – an experience that he had never ever had, anywhere.

“How dumb” the boss would muse, “But I suppose there are a lot of townies who wouldn’t know that it is just about impossible to light diesel with a match.  Petrol is another thing, but diesel… lucky for us though.  What do you reckon eh Eric mate?”

Eric just grinned – he was no longer alone.  He just grinned.