Currawalli Street (15 page)

L
ater Jim sits in the living room of this house he grew up in, as uncomfortable as a stranger left suddenly alone in someone else's home. Uncomfortable because it is a room where there was always movement and now there is none. Uncomfortable because he has grown unaccustomed to the soft sagging cushions of the armchair. But mainly uncomfortable because it no longer feels like a room that has ever been lived in, but more like a museum display. The silence that has descended on this house paints the walls in a coat of grey semi-gloss muteness.

Outside the window, a branch from the black magnolia tree bends slightly in the afternoon wind. It scratches at the glass as if it is one of Jim's mates from a long-ago day calling him out to play. He stands, walks over to the window and looks out. The street is empty except for a dog sniffing patiently at something on the nature strip across the road.

Jim turns and glances back around the room. The silence has an echo. While looking out of the window, it felt as if his parents were still sitting around the TV behind him. He looks out the window again.
Where are all the people that had filled this street in his childhood? Do ghosts walk unnoticed up and down the street, going to work, where they are not noticed either, going to the shops to buy things no longer needed, coming home from work unannounced and unexpected? Do ghosts sleep at night-time? Or do they just stand still and watch?

These are jungle thoughts, Jim recognises, not appropriate here. The idle musings of a sniper strapped to a branch in a tree waiting for a target.

He was that sniper. And now he is finding it very hard to leave that role behind; yet all the time he was over there he could think of nothing else but doing just that. Only blood can be wiped away quickly, he supposes, everything else stays.

He looks around him at the walls. Perhaps a life is hardly more than enduring the inconsequential moments of a day, arranging neatly the many loose ends that make up the fabric of a person. And all that is left once they are gone is the colour of a head scarf lying on the grass, the slippers standing behind a door, a shirt still hanging on the clothesline, a single gardening glove on the bench in the tool shed. The TV shows that continue to go on unwatched. An alarm clock going off at the appointed time, unheard and unneeded. Letters that arrive in the letterbox, left unopened and unread. A ringing phone that no one will answer.

Perhaps life is nothing more than those moments that resonate in another person? Like an image reflected in a puddle in the jungle that disappears in a moment as if it was never there. And that is death. The sudden withdrawal of those resonances; the disappearance of that image. And perhaps a legacy is nothing much more than a good thought that doesn't deserve to die with the person who thought it.

Jungle thoughts.

Jim sees his own reflection in the glass as he looks out of the window; through that he watches the young woman from number nine checking her letterbox and then peering up and down the street. Can it be that a life is only real when it is reflected? And is that what a hermit is after, a life without mirrors?

He came across an old hermit early one morning out in the jungle of a disputed province. Jim gave him some food and left him. Perhaps that wiry old man didn't exist until he resonated in Jim, whose memory of him is still vivid. Of all the things he witnessed over there—the horrible things, the unbelievable things, the beautiful things, the dangerous things, the sweet things, the frightening things—it is the moment when the hermit's eyes locked onto his that stands out. When he thinks of that moment now, he identifies it as one of the precise times that his life changed course a little. Like a ship changing direction at sea. The old hermit looked into Jim's eyes and saw the unwritten fear of a young man, the uncertainty of what life was expecting, the confusion about how to walk through the world. The hermit saw it all and without speaking, said
None of it means anything
.

Now, right here in the spot where he stands, is an example, Jim realises, of a tiny moment of no real consequence that has become an enduring legacy. His father had never allowed this particular window to be opened, because, he said, ‘your grandmother thought the wind was colder when it came through here'. Jim shakes his head. He knows when he needs a drink.

He throws open the window; strangely enough, the breeze actually does feel noticeably cold. Quickly he closes it again and walks out
into the hallway. He opens the front door and looks down the path to the front gate. The black magnolia tree is in need of pruning. So is the honeysuckle.

Jim looks across the street to number seven and watches Patrick, his father's friend—a little bonier, a little greyer, a little more perplexed—pacing up and down on his front veranda. He regularly looks at his watch, as if waiting for a train to arrive. In fact, he is the stationmaster at the Choppingblock Road station around the corner. Patrick has always been stationmaster there, for as long as Jim can remember; although he doesn't recall seeing him walk up and down his veranda like this before. But perhaps he just hadn't noticed.

Jim closes the door and walks back down the hallway. He thinks about turning on his father's radio in the bedroom but decides not to. He doesn't trust that the radio won't still be broadcasting what it was before the killer came through the door and the gun was fired twice. Ghost radio.

He walks into the kitchen and looks at the pile of dust in the corner. From the cupboard under the sink he draws out the brush and shovel. He cleans up the dust without another thought, just like his mother would have.

Jim looks down at his open notebook on the kitchen table. There is one sentence written there. He reads it, then sits down and picks up the pen to add to it, but writes nothing.

Maybe it is the human lot never to resolve things. Jim doesn't seem to be able to. He always had something itching at him; he remembers Mai's words, one time in Saigon. From a sagging armchair in a not-so-cheap hotel facing a shoe factory she told him that he was a man with
‘peppered thoughts'. He had looked out the window long enough to establish that he didn't know what a peppered thought was, and that he didn't think they should be in the hotel room any longer.

Two hours later a grenade was rolled along the floor into the café next to the hotel. If Jim's intuition told him to move, he moved, no matter how comfortable he was. If it told him to leave the food on the plate he left it, no matter how hungry he was. If it told him not to walk along a jungle track any further, he cut his way into the thick undergrowth.

His intuition helped keep him alive.

Standing in the kitchen with the brush in one hand and the shovel in the other he decides that he will pay for a cleaner to go through the house before he properly moves back in. The cleaner can deal with all the dust ghosts, shadow ghosts, fallen-moment ghosts, racing-form-guide ghosts, dirty-dish ghosts, half-used perfume-bottle ghosts, and all the quiet ghost noises that are calling to him and that probably only he can hear. Maybe he will go away to the beach until it is emptied and cleaned? Should he have each room repainted? He will call his friend Lukewarm to help him. Lukewarm is a painter—not a house painter, but he knows how to use paint to cover things.

He knows what Lukewarm will say to him. He knows the questions he will ask. Jim quietly clutches his forehead as if he has a sudden headache. In Vietnam he didn't make a move without listening for Lukewarm's soft advice. Sometimes it was hard to remember that Lukewarm wasn't lying in the mud with him, watching the sugar ants climb over his rifle. One day he will tell Lukewarm that his questions, advice and jokes were with Jim every day over there.

It was only the luck of the draw that Jim was conscripted and Lukewarm wasn't. It came down to the roll of some marbles. And as friends do who agree on something without saying anything, Jim took Lukewarm's heart with him over there, and Lukewarm kept Jim's here on Currawalli Street.

Jim thinks some more about his current situation. He knows that Lukewarm will advise him to stay here while the cleaner works in case they throw away things that should be kept. Jim can't think of anything that should stay at the moment. It all should go.

He looks at the closed cupboards.

Except for Grandfather's paintbrushes. Dad's tools. Mum's old swap cards. And, of course, Grandmother's silver box. No, he'd better be here to keep an eye on things.

Jim has taken off his dog tags and now they are rattling around uncomfortably in the front pocket of his trousers. He knows where he should put them—in the place where all the important family documents were kept. It was only a small metal cash box but it was always known as the silver box. It originally came from the farm that Grandfather's parents owned and it always sat in the cupboard above the fridge, next to the unopened bottle of sherry, the maps that were pulled out only when planning for a holiday, and an old letter from a gangster to Grandfather.

He opens the cupboard. The silver box isn't there. He leaves the dog tags on the table, behind the salt and pepper shakers. He hurries down the hallway and out the front door to breathe in some fresh air, then
stops at the gate and looks down the street.

Jim has seen Maddie walk up the street many times before. But never like this. Before it was the walk of a girl; now she has a woman's walk.

Maddie is Lukewarm's little sister. She is holding hands with a boy with hair as long as hers. He has grand sideburns that peek out occasionally when strands of hair bounce off his face. He looks at Jim then quickly his eyes dart away. Their hands stop swinging.

The boy carries a khaki canvas shoulder bag full of textbooks. It bounces off his hip as he walks. On the side of the bag is the yellow star of the Viet Cong. Jim looks at it again in case he is mistaken. But no, that's what it is.

Probably the last place he would expect to see such an emblem is outside his front gate in Currawalli Street. Wasn't that one of the reasons why he was sent to war—to stop this star appearing on his street? But it's here anyway. Carried by a local boy who doesn't know any better. A boy who most likely doesn't know what it means.

And Maddie. The little sister of his best friend. The girl who could be so easily teased is looking at Jim now as if daring him to say something.

‘Hello, Maddie,' he says at last.

‘Hi, Jim. You're home?'

‘Yep. Cleaning out the house.'

‘Luke said he is going to help you.'

‘Really? I haven't seen him yet. He's alright?'

‘Same as ever. Annoying and stupid. Just like Dad.' She tries to smile.

‘But he's going to help me?'

‘That's what he said. You know Luke, though—whether he turns up or not is another thing.'

‘I hope he does. I could do with some assistance.' Jim glances at the boy who is continuing to avoid eye contact, looking away down the street.

Maddie says nervously, ‘This is Oscar.'

‘G'day Oscar.'

Oscar mumbles a hello and pulls his bag around to the front so that Jim can see the Viet Cong star more clearly. Jim stares at it. He remembers a wooden sign by the side of a track leading into the jungle. The track was once used by the Americans. The words, in Vietnamese, were faded, the wood beginning to rot, and the post was leaning heavily towards the creepers and vines. In deference to Maddie and to Lukewarm, Jim says nothing. In English.

But as the young couple begin to walk on, he leans over the gate, firmly takes hold of Oscar's arm and says quietly to him, ‘
Hay can than cua con rong ban danh thuc
.' A look of fear crosses Oscar's face and he pulls his arm away.

Maddie looks between them, confused. She slides her hand through Oscar's arm and hurries him down the street towards her house.

Jim walks back to the front door, looking down at the carpet in the hallway as he enters. He has always disliked its pattern and colour. It was a subject he and his parents could safely argue about without having to go near the topics that were the real source of disagreement. He didn't think it was old-fashioned enough to keep, even by his parents'
standards. They emphatically stated that it was laid by his grandfather, and it was important to have something of his in the house still. After all, his grandfather had bought the house. He was an artist, Jim's dad always said. Not like Lukewarm; a real artist. As if being a good artist meant something that Jim could not be expected to understand.

He is itchy. He can't sit down. Something is scratching at his insides. He recalls a South Vietnamese soldier who started complaining of being constantly itchy on the inside. He couldn't sleep, eat, or sit still. Jim watched him walk into the jungle early one morning, not via the water buffalo tracks that had become well-used troop trails but through the lemongrass bulrushes next to the river. They never saw the man again. That sort of thing happened, he was told; local people disappear sometimes. They are not looked for. Their time on earth is up, they are expected somewhere else. If they don't listen to that command, if they choose to ignore it and continue to follow the demands of their twentieth-century life, then they begin to grow an itch on the inside. It will get worse until it becomes unbearable and they are forced to listen to the order and leave.