Max

First published 2000 by The Vulgar Press,
PO Box 68, Carlton North, Victoria 3054.

Copyright © Michael Hyde 2000

All rights reserved. This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of study, research, criticism, review, or as otherwise permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Enquiries should be made to the publisher.

National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication entry
Hyde, Michael, 1945-.
Max: a novel
ISBN 0 9577352 1 9.(pbk)
I. Title.
A823.3

Typesetting and design by Vulgar Enterprises of North Carlton.

Digital edition prepared by
Port Campbell Press
www.portcampbellpress.com.au
ISBN 9781742981581 (ePub)

A
WEEK AGO LOU HAD BEEN ALIVE. Alive and kicking. Heart beating, brain ticking, lungs pumping, body working. Everything fitting into everything else, like the rhythmic swing of Max's body paddling, the blade of the paddle reaching out and pulling through the water, his kayak slipping through the mist.

Lou's parents had chosen a small chapel in St.Kilda, miles from anywhere. Well, miles away from his home and from his friends, which is probably why they picked it. Max's dad drove him to the chapel to see Lou's body laid out, because he thought it would help. Max wasn't sure what would or wouldn't help, so he went along with the idea.

He sat down next to the coffin and there Lou was. Not sleeping. Well and truly dead. His long face shone like mother of pearl through the make-up. He had a suit on. A suit!? Max had never seen Lou in a suit. ‘Must have been his poor mum's idea', thought Max. ‘Her one chance to create her dream son.'

Max reached out and touched Lou's forehead, touched the ring with Lou's graffiti tag engraved on the silver band. The fingers were the colour of creamy plastic, like the little army men scattered over Woody's bedroom floor. Lou's skin felt like lukewarm clay. Not clammy, not icy; just a place where warmth used to be.

In the silent chapel, late-afternoon light shone through stained glass windows. Rows of empty pews sat on polished boards. And except for a faint smell of incense and candle wax, the chapel smelt cold.

Max wanted to talk to his dead friend. He wanted Lou to sit up and chat to him the way they had always done. He wanted Lou to talk about factory walls, about spray cans, about girls. Max would have been happy even if Lou didn't feel like talking, if only Lou could open his eyes just one more time and say goodbye.

‘Oh mate, if I could press a button or say some magic that would bring you back, I would. If I could've helped you, made your life better... but it wasn't that bad was it? Bad enough for you to go... to go and do what you did? I'll tell you something. It might have been bad for you but it's shithouse for me at the moment. And look at those hands of yours. Bloody artist's hands... at least they used to be. Now look at 'em, bloody useless!' Max stood up. The scrape of the chair echoed in the chapel. He could feel his body beginning to shake. ‘Fuck you, mate. What were you thinking of? Did you give a shit about any of us? About how it would make me feel?' Max wanted to grab hold of Lou and shake the living crap out of him. Instead, he found himself staring hard at Lou's face, searching for the smallest sign of life and willing him to return.

But the more Max stared, the more he realised that Lou wasn't there – that Lou's body was no more than a husk, a place where his spirit once used to be. For death was more than an absence of pulse and a brain clacking away – it was also an absence of spirit. Max knew that not a skerrick of Lou remained there in that shiny mahogany box. For Max at that moment, all that remained was memories.

Max got in the car. His father was listening to music.

‘I'll turn it off if you like?'

Max shook his head.

‘Ready to go? Want to go somewhere? Or have you had enough?' Max's father looked closely at his son and then turned and stared out the window. ‘Chapels can be pretty cold places sometimes, can't they Max? Was it OK in there? Did you say goodbye?'

Max played with his cap in his hands. ‘ Not really. It's like he's not here at all... I mean, I know he's not but... You know what I wanted to do? What I intended to do? I just wanted to give him a hug, say goodbye. But I couldn't... not because he was cold or anything... it's just that it wasn't him.'

M
AX GRABBED HIS CANVAS SATCHEL and headed out the door. ‘Won't be long. Just going out for a walk. Back in an hour or so.'

The night was like a black hole. Wind rattled up from the river, shaking the wheelie bins and scattering rubbish. Max walked quickly with the wind at his back buffeting the bag full of cans. Leaves had begun to gather in the deep gutters. Rats from the river scurried along makeshift tunnels of rotting leaves.

‘Eat up boys. Better get big and strong before one of your own mob eats you.'

Max threw a rock at the base of an old plane tree, making a possum leap in the air and race up into the green darkness.

Max often wondered what his father thought he did on these late night roamings. Knock over service stations? Steal womens' knickers off clotheslines? Meet girls and roll with them down on the chilly banks of the river? Dave probably knew. It wasn't too difficult to guess when the bottom of his wardrobe looked like an ad for Berger paints.

‘Funny. He never says anything about it. Never asks one question. Don't think he even approves... well, I know he doesn't. Heard him one day, with a mate.'

Of course, Dave did know but he didn't think about it much. If Max came home too late, then he'd say something. But usually the telly was on and there was little talk at that hour.

Max turned off the main road and walked towards the railway line. The crossing bells were clanging. He stood with his hands on the white railings and felt the rumble of the train in the earth as it gathered speed out of the station, heading for the bridge over the creek.

The train threw its light and thunder into the night and as it passed, Max smelt electricity and dust in the air. The light from the carriages flashed on his face, his eyes held by the wheels spinning along the line.

Then there was only gusts of wind and the scraping of a loose sheet of corrugated iron.

He watched the light of the last carriage disappear, then looked across the tracks to the vast cement wall alongside the line. Three dimensional slabs of paint covered most of the surface. Murals of wonder on canvases of stone and mortar. Pieces of graffiti.

Blue faces with eyes like blowflies stared vacantly. Streaks of aqua ran down to a flared and menacing nose. Small grey gremlins sat on shoulders, whispering into bulbous ears. Orange flames licked around a jumble of words painted yellow and violet.

At the end of this urban gallery was a real showpiece – black and red snakes with white paint daubed along their bodies, heads reared back, ready to strike into a tangle of words. Along the bottom the Big Dipper spewed from a decaying head.

Max picked his way through the onion grass and the dead thistles, till he reached the spot where he and Lou had stood a short time ago, a long time ago.

‘This cost us eighty bucks, mate. Thought the least I could do was finish it. Make it the masterpiece we wanted it to be.'

He started with purple – royal purple, so dark it melted to black. A black that held you. Layers of paint sprayed up against the wall, the spray moving sweetly and quickly, forming shapes, letting loose clouds of colour that finally became an ‘L'.

Max stopped to look. Stopped to listen. In this game it paid to stay alert. The end of the wall was next to a dead end street, packed with grimy terraced cottages and factory buildings. Over it all a neon streetlight flickered.

He looked back up at his work. ‘Well Lou, this piece is no throw-up, no quick tag on a window.' Max stood there next to the line, absent-mindedly shaking his can. The noise of the marble rattled off the factory wall. He zipped up his padded flannel jacket.

‘Just a bit more to do.'

He began again, feeling confident, the can warming up in his hand. On the left of the painting was a sloping ‘U', which disappeared into fields of green. As he painted, the ‘U' began to seem like Lou smiling. Smiling? That would have been rare. Lou had a sense of humour and he could tell a good joke, but a smile or a laugh hardly ever broke the surface.

Max had seen Lou smile, though. Because Lou smiled when he was painting. When he was a writer, with cans of many colours, Lou would beam.

The spray cans needed shaking every few seconds now and Max wondered how long he'd been out. That was the beauty of being a writer. You were so focussed that every part, every molecule of you fitted together perfectly. And time didn't seem to matter.

‘We're spray can warriors, Lou. Spray can writers – The best. People are going to marvel at this. Trundling to work on the train, feeling grey, mouths to feed, wives and husbands to hate and there, one minute from the station, a great fucking masterpiece.'

Max was surprised by his own words, echoing down the ratty little street. If he wasn't careful, somebody would hear him, maybe ring the cops. And then he'd be up shit creek. If he was caught by the cops, it'd be no laughing matter. Caught on the night he was finishing his and Lou's last piece ... Lou would think that was a bit uncool.

Something touched his face. A lukewarm breeze coming up from the gully. He could hear the faint trickling of the creek under the bridge. He stared at Lou's name on the wall and wondered if he should write RIP. What did that mean anyway? Ripped? Ripped off? Rotting... rotting in purgatory? Half way between heaven and hell? And if heaven was ‘up' and hell was ‘down there' did that make earth purgatory? Was he in a half way house, and Lou somewhere else?

He tossed a can into a bush. ‘Geez, Lou. We're not writers any more. Not writers together, anyway. This is the last one we can really call ours – our piece.'

He moved back to his work, touching up the top edge of his dead friend's name. The purple letters folded into a mass of colours. The street light cast moving shadows that gave the piece a life of its own. Purple pulsed in the night like a beating heart as Max stood back to look at the letters of Lou's name. He found an empty tin drum, upended it and climbed onto this makeshift platform, ready to add the final touches to the piece.

Holding his can in the air, he was Michaelangelo in a grimy Sistine Chapel. As he sprayed, the colours surrounding Lou's name seemed to move in and out of the wall. Purple ooze towards him, looping like a wave ready to ride. Max felt himself float, felt the swell beneath him, gathering him in the power of its curl, till he reached the point where it was no longer possible to drop off the back into the throbbing sea behind.

The wave bent its body and the writer was away on his journey. Edging forward, he moved in front of the tunnel of water and skimmed his fingers along its glassy curve. The purple spray from the wave enveloped him, while the letters sang to him like sirens.