Boy Swallows Universe. Trent Dalton
the lift operator walked us up another set of secret stairs off the engine room that led up to an observation deck where Slim said Brisbane kids used to throw coins over the rail and seventy-five metres down to the roof of City Hall as they made a wish.
‘I wish I had more time,’ I said as I tossed a copper two-cent piece over the rail.
Then time struck.
‘Block your ears,’ Clancy smiled, turning his eyes up to a giant steel blue bell I hadn’t seen above us. And this bell rang loudly eleven times and near burst my eardrums and I changed my wish to one where time had to stop in that moment for the wish to come true.
*
‘You seeing all the details, Eli?’ Slim asks across the table.
‘Huh?’ I say, snapping back to now.
‘You catchin’ all the details?’
‘Yeah,’ I say, puzzled by the testing look in Slim’s eye.
‘You catching all that periphery stuff, kid?’ he asks.
‘Sure. Always, Slim. The details.’
‘But you missed the most interesting thing about that article you have there.’
‘Huh?’
I study the article, scan the words again.
‘The byline,’ he says. ‘Bottom right-hand corner.’
The byline. The byline. Bottom right-hand corner. Eyes scanning down, down, down across ink words and pictures. There it is. There’s the byline.
‘What the fuck, Gus!’
I will associate this name with the day I learned how to manipulate time.
This name is Caitlyn Spies.
Slim and I look sharply at August. He says nothing.
Boy Kills Bull
Here’s Mum through a half-open bedroom door. She stands in her red going-out dress in front of the mirror hanging on the inside door of her wardrobe, fixing a silver necklace around her neck. How could any sane man not be happy in her presence, not be content, not be grateful for what he’s got to come home to?
Why would my father fuck that up? She’s so fucking wondrous my mum that it fills me with rage. Fuck any and all of those fuckers who stood within a foot of her without first seeking permission from Zeus.
I pad into her bedroom, sit on the bed near her at the mirror.
‘Mum?’
‘Yes, matey.’
‘Why did you run from my father?’
‘Eli, I don’t want to talk about this now.’
‘He did bad things to you, didn’t he?’
‘Eli, that’s a conversation—’
‘We’ll have when I’m older,’ I say. The go-to line.
She gives a half-smile into the wardrobe mirror. Half apologetic. Half touched I give a shit.
‘Your father wasn’t well,’ she says.
‘Is my father a good man?’
Mum thinks. Mum nods.
‘Is my father more like me or more like Gus?’
Mum thinks. Mum says nothing.
‘Does Gus ever scare you?’
‘No.’
‘Sometimes he scares the shit out of me.’
‘Watch your language.’
Watch my language? Watch my language? This is what really shits me, when the clandestine heroin operation truth meets the Von Trapp family values mirage we’ve built for ourselves.
‘Sorry,’ I say.
‘What scares you?’ Mum asks.
‘I don’t know, the stuff he says, the stuff he writes in the air with his magic finger wand. Sometimes it doesn’t make sense and sometimes it makes sense only two years later or a month later when it’s impossible for him to have known it would make sense.’
‘Like what?’
‘Caitlyn Spies.’
‘Caitlyn Spies? Who’s Caitlyn Spies?’
‘That’s just the thing. We have no idea whatsoever, but ages ago Slim and I were messing around in the LandCruiser and we were watching August write his little messages in thin air and we caught him writing that name over and over. Caitlyn Spies. Caitlyn Spies. Caitlyn Spies. Then, last week, we read this big article in the South-West Star, this big “Queensland Remembers” spread, and it’s all about Slim, it’s the whole story of the Houdini of Boggo Road and it’s a really interesting piece and then we see the name of the woman who wrote it squeezed down in the bottom right-hand corner of the page.’
‘Caitlyn Spies,’ Mum says.
‘How’d you know?’
‘You were kinda setting it up for that, buddy.’
She moves to her jewellery box on a white chest of drawers. ‘He’s obviously been reading her pieces in the local rag. He probably just liked how her name sounded in his mind. He does that, latches on to a name or a word and runs it over and over again in his mind. Just because he doesn’t speak words doesn’t mean he doesn’t love them.’
She clutches two green gem earrings in her hand and leans down to me, talking softly and carefully.
‘That boy loves you more than he loves anything in this universe,’ she says. ‘When you were born . . .’
‘Yeah, I know, I know.’
‘. . . he watched over you so carefully, guarded your crib like all of human life depended on it. I couldn’t drag him away from you. He’s the best friend you will ever have.’
She stands and turns to the mirror.
‘How do I look?’
‘You look beautiful, Mum.’
Keeper of lightning. Goddess of fire and war and wisdom and Winfield Reds.
‘Mutton dressed up as lamb,’ she says.
‘What does that mean?’
‘I’m an old mutton dressing up as a young lamb.’
‘Don’t say that,’ I say, frustrated.
She sees my mood in the mirror.
‘Hey, I’m just joking,’ she says, fixing her earrings in.
I hate it when she puts herself down, self-worth being, I believe, a fairly major root cause of everything from our living in this street to my outfit tonight, a yellow polo shirt and a pair of black slacks all purchased from the St Vincent de Paul Society opportunity shop in the neighbouring suburb of Oxley.
‘You’re too good for this place, you know,’ I say.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘You’re too good for this house. You’re too smart for this town. You’re too good for Lyle. What are we doing here in this shithole? We shouldn’t even fucking be here.’
‘All right, thanks for the heads-up, matey. I think you can go finish getting ready now, huh?’
‘All those arseholes got the lamb because she always thought she was mutton.’
‘That’s enough now, Eli.’
‘You know you should have been a lawyer. You should have been a doctor. Not a fucking drug dealer.’