(This is a short fiction piece I wrote a while back, part of a series of shorts I worked on – hope you like it. And warning, some bad language)
Of all of it, the months I spent in the beach town, right out at the edge of the Earth, those are the ones I remember. The memories I see when I close my eyes. The sun warming across the backs of the white sand grains. The desert weeds flickering in the gusts. Of all the times, those were the days I felt happiest about. The times that would return in dream.
I’d got in with this group of people who’d come to the beach and decided they never wanted to leave. Minds flooded with childhood memories and adulthood hurts. They’d created this community of deserters all living in this two storey house, growing their own vegetables, generating their own electricity. Re-using their waste. Jobs were hard to come by, so only a few of them worked and then I came in and I got a job at the service station just off the freeway. Every week we’d pool the money earned by the ones who worked and we’d buy essentials which were listed in order on a piece of paper in the kitchen. They sang songs, which I didn’t like, but I could sit and smile and pretend I didn’t know the words, my face burning from the camp fire blaze. It was simple, living with them. No one wanted to know who you were, what you’d done. Everyone just was. Everyone just wanted to enjoy life.
There were at least twenty people in that house. Drifters would come through town and sleep on floors – they always had odd names like Rex or Pardy or Jai. They were just wandering through life, these guys, hitch-hiking one town to the next. No pressure, no concerns. They just lived a day at a time. I thought, for a while, that this was how I should be. This was what I should be. I asked lots of questions about how they did it, how they went about life, but a lot of the time it sounded difficult and unpleasant and they never really wanted to say too much and I figured it was best to stay where I was. In the beach sun it was idealistic, but when the rain set in. Sickness is difficult with nowhere to rest.
They had an outdoor shower. What it was was a bucket that they’d fill with warm water, then, once it was full, they’d drag it up by rope over a tree branch and it had these tiny holes in the bottom that would leak the water out and you’d stand beneath it and wash yourself, right out in the open. Sometimes, I’d watch the women do it, I’d stand at a distance and watch the soap bubbles sliding over their nipples and their curves, gathering at the edges of their hair. It was amazing.
We were working on building another room, gathering wood and nails from building sites in the night and buying other parts as we could afford them, bit by bit. One of the men used to be a builder and he told us how to connect this to that and I listened to everything and tried to make sure I didn’t saw anything uneven or bend any nails. He said I was a good worker, put his arm around me at the end of the day. I couldn’t remember ever feeling so happy.
At nights we’d play board games and read stories from the newspaper and they’d talk about the latest news and politics and I had no idea what they were saying most of the time. Other nights we’d go to those big metal Salvation Army donation bins and we’d jump inside, sift through what was there. We’d push out bags of jumpers and pants and t-shirts and bring back what we needed. Sometimes, someone would sleep right up beside you, hug onto you, and you’d just go with it. That’s just how it was, it didn’t mean anything.
One time some drifter fucking yelled at me. He was tanned with this curly, long blonde hair and he was yelling about me working for a big oil company, saying they were responsible for some shit and I was responsible too because I took their money and I clenched my fist, ready to punch the fucking teeth out of his head and then the others yelled back at the blonde guy. They put their hands onto my shoulders and they pointed and yelled and then they kicked him out, that guy, pushed him out into the night. They patted me on the back and on the head and the girls kissed me on the cheek and I watched that guy leave from the window, dragging his backpack beneath the blue of the full moon. He kept stopping and turning round and yelling some more, then he was gone, drifted out into the darkness.
Lost beneath the sounds of the waves washing in.
There was one night when I was working and it was real quiet, no one was around – there never was late at night. Then these two guys came rushing through the electronic doors, both in balaclavas and singlets and shorts and the two men rushed to the counter and one of them pointed a hand gun right at my face and I stood up, put my hands in the air.
‘Don’t worry.’ The man with the gun said. His eyes poked through the woollen holes. ‘Just give us the money, it’s all good.’ And I knew the man’s voice. I stayed still.
‘C’mon man, it’s cool, it’s all under insurance, we worked it all out.’ He was one of the drifters, this guy, I couldn’t remember which one. ‘You just give us the money and we walk out, simple. We’ll give you a cut after.’
I shook my head slow.
‘C’mon man, you can talk. The cameras don’t record sound, it’s just video. You just have to make it look like you’re scared and take out the money.’
‘No, they do record sound.’ I told the drifter. ‘They showed me when they went through the training.’ The man looked to the other guy, then up at the camera.
‘You’ve fucked me.’ I told him. ‘I’ll have to leave now, because they’re gonna’ think I was in on it.’
The man lowered the gun, kept looking at the other guy.
‘Fuck.’ The man said, then he raised the gun again, poked it towards me. ‘Okay, well if we’re fucked anyway, we should just take the money, right? Just take it all out and we’ll just go.’
‘You fucking idiot.’ I said. I was furious, my fists shaking up by my head. ‘You’ve fucked everything up.’
‘Hey, don’t fucken yell at me, I’ve got a gun.’
‘You fucken idiot.’ I yelled. I could feel the warmth of tears bubbling round my eyes. ‘I’m gonna’ get you.’
‘Hey.’ The man yelled. ‘You ain’t gonna’ do shit. Now we are where we are, that’s how it is. Now, you need to get me the fucking money and hand it over, right?’
I stared him down. Those stupid eyes, poking out that black beanie. The man looked out to the road, like maybe someone was coming.
‘C’mon, c’mon, get the money.’ He roared, poked the gun towards me again, the barrel right up at my face now.
‘You pull the fucking trigger.’ I told him. The man hissed, looked away, then back at me.
‘C’mon man. Just give me the fucking money.’
‘You pull the trigger.’ Tears were sliding out now, dragging down my skin. ‘You’ve ruined me.’ I stared straight into the barrel, straight into the darkness of it.
‘Get the fucking money.’ He yelled, pushed the barrel into my cheek and I closed my eyes, held my breath.
Here are three of the questions the police asked me, in no particular order:
‘Did you know the men who robbed the service station?’
‘Did you assist the men in the planning and execution of the robbery?’
‘Did you know you’re wanted on burglary charges back in Melbourne?’
Here are my answers to those questions, also in no order:
‘Yes.’
‘Yes.’
‘No’.
Either way you look at it, I was fucked.
