homeless - part 3
The train to Mandurah is empty, save one lonely, drunken soul.
His head is lolling in an undulating rhythm to the clink of the carriage rolling over connections in the track. There is something so sad and desolate about the solitary, drunken man, the broken odyssey of returning home.
The train is approaching Mandurah, and slowly pitching to a stop. The driver announces “Last stop,” in a muffled eulogy, and the doors open final, the solid air is rushing in, an enveloping reminder of the cold walk ahead. I alight, sculpting the night air, alive, and resurrected.
Rucksack over my shoulder and I’m stepping fast up the station stairs, careful not to trip on the asphalt lining, and there’s a guard there, I can’t believe it, it’s probably four in the morning in this dust bowl suburb, and he’s smoking, reading a paper, leaning against the far side of the exit. He watches me take two stairs at a time and then on seeing him, slow, and for a moment he’s interested with a lazy stare, but as I cast my eyes down, he soon resumes reading. I fish my bag for an imaginary ticket, and then I dart, and jump over the turnstile, using my hands aside the stile as leverage in one smooth jump, and this movement sets him off, but it’s too late now, and all I hear is “Oi!” behind me as I’m sprinting down the street. My run slows to a jog and now a walk. He ain’t gonna chase, and I don’t bother looking back.
My Nan’s house isn’t far from the station really, just across the train trains a few blocks down. I know the way now, I can see the little park in the distance, the place where my siblings and I would take walks in our younger years when visiting her, walks to talk of our intermittent lives, and where we’d come and been. Small, precious moments stolen in the slip from parties, sneaking a smoke, talking of nothing, and the bench where I sat with my sister.
I see the shops adjacent the park, the place where my Nan took an hour to buy bread, as she’d stop in at every store along the way, talking to the café owners and the bright-eyed butcher who would smile at her approach, and she’d ask after his son, and here is my grandson, proudly, and your daughter dear, how is their little one? His eyes would trail back into the histories of things, into his family and he would smile once more, and she gifted him with that. She knew everything about everyone, and was a testament to kindness, my Nan. Kindness, being the greatest ally in her longevity, despite her staple diet of white bread and wine. Her wisdom knew that love of all was her greatest friend. She bought bread this way.
Nan’s house is some hundred metres and now I’m on the street corner, and all I have to do is turn, and head towards it, yet on the corner, I stop. It’s early. She may even be awake, as she wakes often in the night in her older age. I’m steady in gaze on the concrete curb, examining the rust seeping through the porous concrete curbing from the red ore underneath, staining the curb in streaks of swirling red. I’m blushing my eyes over the shifting sands of the street-side median strip, miniature deserts contained by the envelope of cracked concrete curbing, framed in stains, and now to the brick venereal disease of Mandurah suburban housing, the quaint, romantic blight on the shifting sands beneath, garish testaments of a seedling culture. They catch the moonlight, as does the sand, as does the ochre, and even in the darkness the colours are bright, as is the way of this land.
I could go in.
I could knock on the door and wake her, perhaps frighten her for the waking and the knocking, but dear Pop is there, to protect her. I would hear a confused “Julian?” from behind the door, and then perhaps a cautious approach, the soft, jilted steps of the aged and frightened. Knowing the screen door is locked behind the outer, perhaps he would open it, or perhaps he would ask before opening, and I would have to answer in that space between things, the only measure between us some small door to shoulder his journeys with me as a child, scratching the earth with his dogs, the walks we would take together now bridged with the return of me in small hours, begging for shelter.
They would take me in, of course, and would you like some tea? Oh, love, good heavens and look at the state of you, go on, and take a shower, there’s a bed in the room there and are you alright dear? Would you like something to eat?
She didn’t understand my path, my Nan. Didn’t understand her grandson, and his choice with this, and why couldn’t she touch me after my ordination? Why this weird white cult? Why can’t I touch my grandson? I’ve hugged him as a child and held him in my arms. I could see it in her eyes when she brought me food, bless her, despite her reservations. She would come to the monastery, and uncreak her frame from my uncle’s car, hobbling along the drive, and towards the boot, my uncle chuckling for her to sit, but of course she would ignoring his requests, making a dash for the boot where a box of fruits and bread, and other assortments had been brought in offering for the monks. But always a small box of nuts and dried fruit she would tuck into my pocket with a wink, and “Here you go, dear, these are just for you.”
I stand, blinking in the moonlight, and I can see her house.
No.
Turning, I head in the direction of the highway, and hum to distract me from the cold and the prospect of the long walk ahead as I etch the streets.
No-one is stopping.
I don’t blame them, really, although it would be good. Driving down Pinjarra road and seeing a white, balding figurine stumbling towards car lights, arm extended, on that desolate stretch, would have rendered me a ghostly apparition.
It felt like I’d been walking for nights on end.
I’m lying in the red dirt now, in some lowly ditch, watching the ephemeral shadow play of trees mottling my body, and a moment of pause. Tears are sliding from my face, and I watch the beads drop and tamp the earth, silent and still, before breaking, absorbing into the land. I lie on my side, next to the road, in my ditch, breathing up at the stars and the solitary eucalypt in the farmers paddock, it’s warped, gnarled branches a beatific twisting, white form cast in relief against the darkened sky. The beauty of dead trees, the ugly majesty of them.
I can feel the air, the air, the icy sand of it grating my cheeks and forearms, the abrasive blue fire air, fibreglass grating at me, parasitic. I can feel the tremor in the deeper fibre of my muscles. I lie taught, entombed, embalmed by the night, clenching against the cold like some road-side kill in rigor mortis. My eyes are full, and weeping, my vision blurred, and rising, the body rising now, I use my arm to push against the night, and the cold, and the earth, and push up with my hand and into the earth and sit slouched, yet talling, with every quadrant of life I can extract from the body, and try the deadened tree, try the majesty, and the rise, my body now clambering to its own saddened safety of movement again and I must keep on walking. I must keep moving.
I’m walking. Every step, just one step, and within that, steps, many steps of excruciating, detailed movement, my mind only on the next step. I dare not seek purpose or plan or future in these movements, so cold. I dare not look up beyond the yard before me, just the yard before me, that is enough, it is more than enough, I am worthy of that. The body, convulsing, flobbling along, tremors still as I’m walking to the side, on the road, walking of the side, leaning into myself. This cold desert air is threatening death. I stumble, retching to the side, and no water from me, just an empty bile. I need water.
I’m still walking, the light from behind me ascending, oh, the light, the light! I notice it now, the shift in colour, the colour, the emerging bleached blue and white on the horizon line. The sound of a car approaching from behind and I don’t even extend the thumb, just the finger, and I’m spinning around, fingering him, some scary haze on the highway, spitting at the solitary traffic, scaring past. I dry my tears, and swallow them, thinking they may be important.
I can see the highway in the distance, with the rising light, and I’m screaming now, screaming into the dawn, hurting myself.
I’m hitting myself, fighting against the cold, my cold, hitting my body to scare away the dawn cold, like some ancient warrior rallying the scourge, before sending it into battle. The cold is light, I want to fight it and fuck it, I’m punching it, punching the air, calling it out, calling out the dawn.
“Come on you fucker!”
And with last call a snap into silence, I stop, and watch the sifting blue light sluice the emerging canopy of a banksia tree, passing between the foliage in shards of revelation, my mind clear, and brightening. Body swaying, I have no time, no place, I feel like flotsam on an endless sea and it reminds me of the Buddha, and something he said –
“For many years you’ve been wandering through these lives. So many years, your tears have filled the oceans, and your bones have piled as high as the Himalayas.”
This thought, breaks me.
I fall, free-fall and hit myself on the tarmac road. Skinned and weeping, in the idle foot of the road and I don’t even care. I’m crying and reeling across the bitumen, and hugging myself, rolling.
And then I stop. I listen. Still within me, is some small flame. Something within me snaps, and I hear the snap, and like some cryogenic beast awoken from ancient sleep, I rise and dance into the dew, skipping on the road and wailing, and I’m running now, running full tilt, and my body is screaming and I’m giddy at the morning and beaming full, and I’m laughing, I’m coming for the road, for the light, for the dawn, from the night, I’m not here anymore, I’m a trail, I’m the flight of the bird, invisible and free, the desert is bleaching me from my mind, and I can see the highway now, ever closer, and I kiss it with my mind, and I know the end is close, and the night is failed, and the desert is beaten, and I am changed. I pull the road towards me, and I need water, my throat feels bloodied, I need water. I am free.
The halogen light is low, and sticking to me. I can feel the electric hum vibrant on my skin as I walk into this fresh, white, hellish relief. At the far side of the petrol station shop, opposite the entrance, a large, barrel-chested, deep-bellied man is leaning on the counter, talking to a middle-aged, pencil-thin woman behind the counter. Her whispy brown hair is tied back in a top-knot.
“Streuth…” she whispers crisp, as she breaks their conversation, and the round man turns his head around and towards me and she looks at the enigma walking through the door. I’m looking down the aisle, and the distance between our bodies seems an alien distance, rarely travelled.
As I walk the aisle, approaching, I hear the man ask, “…You right, mate?”
I can feel the painted tears on my face and the silent and uncaring shame of it, and I’m rubbing my eyes and can only wonder what they think of this gaunt figure emerging from suburban dawn, scalped and senseless.
“Yeah…” I say, approaching, and on meeting them I don’t know what to say.
“Do you have any water?”
“Yes love,” she says, and guessing I have no money, gives me a bottle she fetches from behind the counter.
I snatch it from her and drink it down, not stopping, it spilling from the sides of my mouth, onto my shirt. When finished, I drop the bottle, and hands on my knees, I’m reeling over, feeling I’m about to pull it back up, but I hold it in, and they watch me, wide-eyed and waiting.
Inhaling, I stand tall, and say to the man, I guess he’s a Maori sort, squat and full, “I need to go up the road a bit,” I say, pointing up the highway.
The woman behind the counter is looking at him, following his lead.
He nods. “OK,” he says. “I’m going up that way… guess I’m leaving now,” he says, with a smile and this relaxes the woman, “Ya wanna lift?”
“That would be amazing.”
“Alright,” he says, rising from the bench, “See-ya Mazza,” he says to the woman, now looking at me, uncertain.
He walks to the exit and I’m trailing behind like an ugly duckling, and he’s moving off to the left outside the automatic exit doors, and behind the main station and I can’t believe I haven’t seen it, this monolithic truck parked by the side of the petrol station. A massive freight truck, with no rig.
“Get in,” he says, motioning with his hand to the opposite side. A clamber on to the passenger side and up and into the cabin, and we’re high above the road.
He’s already in the driver’s seat and firing up the engine and firing up a lighter and lighting a rollie he’s produced, rolled previous now fetched, crumpled from the pouch. He lights it, and the cabin smells like aged tawny, smoke tumbling and trailing in curlicue swirls over the dash, licking at the edges of things.
The engine is idling, and he turns to me.
“Just gotta let her warm up,” he says.
“Thanks for the lift.”
“I haven’t given you one yet,” he says, laughing, and it’s the kind of humour my father has, and makes me feel small. I feign a smile.
He punches me on the arm, a play-punch that feels like an anvil and across the dash in the reeling pain I see a faded playboy, the muffed snatch grinning at me like some distant forest sprite, a painted puppet. His cabin smells like wet socks and crickets, and it smells sick but sweet and I want to lick, it, his cabin, I want to trail my tongue across it’s edges I’m now thinking, delirious.
“I’m from Bodhinyana,” I announce, triumphantly, more to cut my strange, fetishistic thought, than to communicate with him. “Right…” he says, firing up the ignition.
He shifts into low gear, and lurches the truck forward and onto the road, turning in a slow, wide arc to oncoming traffic, and with a wave of the hand, we’re turning and into second, and in staggering starts, we’re now flying down the highway in some unstoppable object.
The pasty lads, thin capped and shaved short, on my mind, and the cropped crops, their shorn tips, are piping the morning dew, breathing in pink sunlight, sending them sublime. Scraggled, crabby rocks jut the rolling landscape, ochre jutting from the earth, and the ant mounds, totemic offerings from mother earth, now offered to the surface, heaped in worship, basking in the sun. I’m shuddering, and so he turns on the heat, warming the cabin, though all he has is a worn, blue wife-beater, moth-eaten at the edges.
“My daughter,” he says, glancing at me, “my daughter… just married. Married an Aussie bloke. I’m from Samoa,” he says, and I’m looking at him now.
“Oh yeah?” I offer, dying in the morning.
“This bloke, and… ya know, he’s a good bloke. A good bloke, mate, this kid.”
I’m waiting for him.
“Sho’s a good kid, my girl, married this bloke and she loves him, I can tell it,” he’s asking me, as if I’d know.
I nod, in hope.
“They like…” and he trails. “they found each other, you know? They found each other, and I’m not sure I like this bloke, but I can ‘cos she loves him, and they just been married… cost a lot, the wedding, cost a lot, bro. Cost a lot, and I don’t have a lot, but he does, you know, he does… they do, which is good for him. Good for her too. Good for me too!” and with this he laughs, a crackling kind of laugh, sharp against the light, and he’s not watching the road and I am, despite my tired, and I can see that his muscle memory knows the road, the glides and angles of it.
“How long you-?”
But he cuts me off, tensing now, “She’s dead,” he says.
The road trailing before us.
“She’s dead two years my wife. Sho saw her, knew her, but not really, you know?”
I pause, uncertain what to say.
“Family, mate. Family.”
And with this we watch the highway roll on.
Eventually, “Been here fifteen years’nu. Not much work back there.”
“Where you been from?”
“Been Kununurra, ‘ay.”
“I was brought up there,” I say, and he turns to me.
“No shit?”
We’re approaching the turn-off and I say he can drop me off on the corner but he says no, and he turns into the road saying no worries and how far is it and I say not far and he says OK.
“How far you been?” he asks.
“How far? Just up the hill,” I say, missing the question.
As we drive up the mountain I see the burst of small, desert flowers, and feel warmed.
Pulling up to the lookout opposite the monastery, he takes a five-point turn, to turn the truck around, and now we’re facing the road, facing the monastery gates.
“Bod-hin-nyah-na” he says, miming the signage on the gate. “What’s that?”
“It’s a Buddhist monastery.”
He smiles, a wide smile and his hands shuffle in recollection, sliding over themselves.
“Sādhu,” he says, and I wonder where he heard the word.
“Spent some time in Thailand with the missus before she passed,” he says, “good people.”
“They are.”
A pause, as I watch his eyes dance in recollection.
“Alright then.”
“Thanks,” I say, as I slide down out of the cabin. On my way down he catches my arm, holding me.
“Family mate,” he says, before letting me go.
As the truck rolls away down the hill, I walk past the road and into the monastery gates. My body feels bright and liquid. I take a wide, backward tract back to my kuti so as to avoid bumping into others. At my kuti I gulp down water from my rainwater tank, wash my face and arm-pits, washing off the night, and change into clean clothes. I need food, and so I make for the refectory.
I take another small, less travelled forest path up towards the refectory, thinking this the most prudent course for slipping into the kitchen discreetly. Just as I exit the forest track I see a senior monk winding down the brick path towards me, moving fast, full of purpose. I feel myself flinch.
I bow my head slightly, glancing up to read his expression, to see if he knows of my absence. As he quickens towards me, his eyes meet my own, and flashing a smile, he laughs.
“Welcome back.”
And I’m homeless, and home.
- Peace.