Delta40
11-12-2011, 10:50 AM
A word is not the same with one writer as with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket.
Jimmy was absently fingering the little book in his pocket as usual when some middle-aged guy, equipped with clipboard and a rough Lancashire accent boarded at the Esplanade Busport. The bus was past seating and now passengers choked up the aisle. They seemed reluctant to move towards the back, despite a voice telling them to do just that. It was because of the noisy school kids horsing about. The clipboard bloke called over the bubbling adolescent chatter that students should give their seats up for adults.
Passengers in the aisle pushed slowly forward, looking for some silent sign in the sea of young faces that they had heard. Jimmy plucked the random quote from his mind and shrank further back into his window seat. Teenage activity had a strong force field. Laughter, shouting, playful punches and iPods, held fast by the sweet sticky scent of bubble gum and body spray. Those kids with blazers embossed in Latin made it clear that there was strength in numbers. They came from all points of the compass to converge on the Fremantle-bound bus. A united front, the uniforms made them arrogant, conceited, self-absorbed and inconsiderate. Everything a private student ought to be. Nobody stood up.
At the front of the bus, adult passengers yielded their seats to the elderly and to those women who stirred the hearts of men.
The driver, looking like someone from the Australian cricket team, drove off, his green cap pulled tightly down over his eyes so he did not have to deal with anyone on this route. Next Friday, his roster would not include the school run; he’d make sure of that.
Jimmy caught a whiff of sweet coconut. A young Asian woman near him tried to squeeze past other passengers. The bus rocked and came to a stop. The back doors opened. A rush of warm spring air reminded those standing nearby that the heat of the bus was greater and bodies pressed against bodies was stifling. The Asian woman, her smile fixed, apologised profusely as she struggled to reach the exit. Too late. The doors closed. Passengers looked at her emotionlessly. In these conditions - chivalry famine at four o’clock, only one person called out on her behalf but not loud enough. She seemed too quietly spoken to help herself. She rang the bell again. Jimmy inhaled the exotic moist coconut scent for another stop. He pressed the palms of his hands together and tucked them firmly between his legs. She was very pretty. ‘Better keep still if you know what’s good fer ya!’ echoed his mother’s voice through his subconscious. He froze stock-still and watched the view from the window, tapping in to the streams of conversation around him.
‘And like, yeah! I could tell he was hurt really, really bad!’
‘When I went on holidays, I got this picture text and I thought, like, what’s this got to do with anything?’
‘Nobody talks to him. I never talked to him in my entire life!’
The communication strands streaked around Jimmy’s body and he let his shoulders droop slightly so that he could better understand their context in his mind. When Jimmy loosened his neck muscles, he began to transform the streams into a Haiku that he could look at and play with.
I have not spoken
About images in mind
Which give me much pain
One day when he was in Fremantle, an old woman with white hair and a green shopping bag hobbled through the mall. Jimmy had been taking still snapshot photos of people with his speedy shutter eyes when she walked into his line of view.
She reached across (Click!) and placed a pocket-sized book in his hand (Click!) before losing herself in the pedestrian river (Click!).
He mentally developed those three shots of her and now the woman was imprinted on his brain forever. Jimmy took the grubby thumb worn book wherever he went. It contained simple verse, which cracked open like eggs into colourful pictures in Jimmy’s head and left him feeling warm all over.
The bus stopped, started, slowed, speeded up. The conversation streams floated enticingly around him and Jimmy played with the Haiku in his mind, his fingers curling responsively round the strands of the verse, which he visually tried to snatch hold of so that the real picture would burst forth. It was getting harder and harder to stay frozen. Jimmy let the words come from different places to make clearer sense – he didn’t have to wear them in that order. It was so confusing sometimes – building them one way, so he could see it, only to rearrange it in the way that truly showed what he meant. Jimmy took his time, worked hard at thoughts, ideas, pictures, and especially Hangman. Boy had his mother taught him a lesson in that game. Jimmy’s fingers moved slightly but instinctively toward his balls, pinching the cotton material of his tracksuit pants as he remembered what happened when he didn’t guess the word. He set his jaw, squinting to see how the verse could be rebuilt to reflect what he felt and understood. The book was digging painfully into his side. The bus pulled up at a set of lights and two students sharing a set of headphones suddenly sang out, ‘You took the words right out of my mouth.’
He stiffened. That was it, another stream from a different place to help him rebuild what he had started in his mind. His pocket, his mouth, his head, his heart. It didn’t matter where the words had come from, so long as he put them in the right place. Jimmy could do this. He knew he could. The hands that needed to work the true Haiku out of his body quietly began moulding and shaping.
Spoken pain in mind
As he worked, Jimmy clenched his teeth, forcing his breath through the uneven gaps.
Which I have much about me
He discreetly bent further forward, all energy invested in rearranging the verse.
Images give not
As he composed the final line, Jimmy shuddered visibly, a silent micro scream travelling from his guts to rip from his throat as the familiar warmth spread over him.
He sat back, gazed out the window, relieved. He had done it; produced something wonderful, which spoke what he had originally heard around him in a way that reflected what he understood.
Slowly, he took stock of his surroundings. The bus had picked up speed. It wound through Booragoon. Mindless, boring homes with uninteresting secrets blurred past, which looked different, yet familiar. Booragoon wasn’t like Fremantle. Nothing through the window crossed the lens of his snapshot shutter eyes so they didn’t click on this part of the journey. They blinked. Slowly, contentedly. He wasn’t frozen in position anymore. He rubbed his knee. The streams, which inspired Jimmy, no longer hung around him and he noticed other strands of conversation had all but ceased. It often happened when he created Haiku. Jimmy usually found harmony. Only two or three people nattered away as if they hadn’t a care in the world. The loud mechanical groans of the bus took up most of the area reserved for babble. The effervescent teenage crowd had fizzed out to mere whispers and snickers. The bus lurched and passengers faltered awkwardly in the aisle, battling a whole day’s fatigue, while protecting their small personal space. Jimmy had more space than others. A wide berth in fact. In a crowded bus meandering through peak rush-hour traffic, the seat next to him was strangely vacant but Jimmy kept close to the window, enjoying the sensation of his Haiku book with its picture words poking sharply into his ribs. He slipped one hand into his pocket and stroked the outlines, feeling its shape and the words through his fingertips.
In Fremantle, Jimmy went to the mall, where he stood silent and still, holding the Big Issue magazine in his right hand. Occasionally, somebody would stop and purchase a copy from the yellow satchel slung across his shoulders. Jimmy kept quiet the whole time and watched life through his shutter lens eyes. Inside his body, he clicked madly and joyfully at pictures of interest; like the Homewares shop, which held a display of household goods on a stand outside the doorway. It was stacked with cups, plates and serving dishes. The sign read: “Stock must go!” He captured precious moments.
Her hair falling around her face, nobody noticed as she slipped a plate into her bag.
Jimmy stored the snapshot to his mind album.
Fremantle was infested with life on Friday afternoon. Those who sheltered from the havoc of home and sometimes nestled in the arms of doorways, snapped or kissed prying hands, which stuck too far in. In the mall, Jimmy’s eyes clicked on a particular young woman as if to highlight her in Bold and Italics.
Jass could really sing. The wheels of the young woman’s chair were wedged on lock as her upper torso stretched to the sky, her hands reaching up, entreating. She hit a top note and Jimmy blinked. Another snapshot photo for his album.
Angel beckons for
The hidden need to reveal
The truth but still love
Perhaps her fingertips would pluck something wonderful from the heavens. It seemed that she would to Jimmy, who looked around and saw others who noticed the girl in the wheel chair.
‘Thank you, thank you,’ Jass quipped as the coins rattled in her pressed biscuit tin. Jass rolled into the mall most days, the dodgy brake lock weighted by the black chunky heeled shoes she wore. They looked almost comical hanging loosely from her useless legs, which flopped to each side of the foot stirrups of her chair as her upper body moved to the songs she sang without musical accompaniment. Cruel taunts rose from the moving crowd to splatter across her face.
‘Get a job yer skank’
‘Faker. Stop using a wheelchair for pity.’
Jass started with chirpy tunes that became melancholic as the day wore on. Jimmy always gave her a dollar. Jass always said ‘Thanks.’ Today when he approached after her rendition of ‘When You’re Gone,’ Jass managed a cursory smile. In her book, he was harmless and awkward. A shy guy with a toothy grin who probably had a crush on her. Jass was adored by some odd people. She recalled Rodney who had paranoid schizophrenia. He wore her out intellectually and emotionally within two weeks. At least he had a legitimate excuse. The people that annoyed Jass the most were middle class Jocks who offered her money for sex. She was quite attractive in a Bjork fashion. She just couldn’t walk, which she knew was probably part of the attraction.
On impulse, Jass didn’t let Jimmy slip away into the crowd as he normally would.
‘I’m having a real crap time today Jimmy. You wanna grab a coffee or summat?’
Destiny watched, amused as their awkward paths crossed.
What a toothy grin did for his spirit was too great to measure but Jimmy stood there, dumbfounded, while Jass fixed her limbs into place, unlocked the brake and manoeuvred the chair in his direction.
‘Let’s go to Aroma. I’ve got six bucks here. It’s pretty bad for a Friday.’ With one push, Jass jettisoned off.
‘Get out me way!’ she snapped. ‘Hurry!’ A woman was sideswiped as she mowed through the crowd.
‘Pension day will be better, I spect.’
‘I spect’ replied Jimmy parrot style. He struggled to sort through each word to make a daisy chain, which formed a visionary shape of how he saw Jass. He tried to convert the nature of his feelings into Haiku. The strands bloomed. Jimmy remained speechless and watched Jass flower before his eyes.
Jass was a primadonna when it came to moving on wheels. Through the crowd, she ploughed as if she had been born in the chair. At the café, Jass hoisted herself into the booth with one deft movement. Jimmy averted his eyes while she plopped her legs in the position she wanted them to sit.
A waitress approached. Her manner was as frothy as the coffee she served which made Jass wince.
‘I’ll have a cappuccino. What bout you Jimmy?’
‘Me too’
‘You got that or what?’ Jass challenged the waitress, who was roughly the same age and very pretty. The waitress’ subtle gaze slid back to her notebook.
Jass twirled the knotted end of one ginger tress and considered Jimmy. ‘Well, now you got me here, whatcha gunna do with me?’
It was a saucy gesture and she smirked at the man across the table because he was so goofy looking, especially with his front teeth protruding. It was kind of sweet the way his mouth opened to say something but didn’t and his eyes, well they looked too big for his face. Jass wondered how old Jimmy was. Thirty something, perhaps? She knew he had been selling the Big Issue in Freo ever since she started singing there. As Jass waited for a reply, she figured his goofy side was mostly shyness. She softened a little.
‘Well?’
‘I can speak Haiku.
I will write for you a verse.
You will feel magic.’
Jimmy hoped she would understand. For a minute, Jass stared blankly at him while he sat frozen. She knew he spoke weird and now it had a name. Friday’s afternoon sun streamed through the window to catch the new mischief dawning in her eyes.
‘Haiku? My God, I love Haiku! I’m gonna tell you a secret.’ Jass leaned forward and whispered teasingly, ‘When a girl hears a man speak in Haiku tongue, it drives her wild and makes her want him more.’
Jimmy’s heart missed a beat. The book in his pocket clicked on, urging Jimmy to take the delectable strands and weave them into another Haiku. He thought his pants pocket would burn a hole in itself as his mind album opened and some pictures shot out which he didn’t often look at. Before he knew what was happening, he bolted upwards and fled the café. A sympathetic look from the waitress sparked a response from Jass.
‘What are you looking at, ya ugly cow?’
Jass stirred in three sugars with her feisty imagination and tasted a bittersweet picture.
On the other side of the mall, standing before a battered case was a busker called Dutch Joe. His silver hair suited his craggy, weather-beaten lines. He played guitar and harmonica, and picked out old classics. When Dutch Joe put his mind to it, he could even play some mean Latin American tunes but today, he was all about Country and Western so Willie Nelson it was. After Jimmy fled, he found comfort in the old man’s company. He liked to listen to Dutch Joe play because some music reminded him of a carousel ride he once went on as a child. The piebald horse was uncomfortable; its mane matted between the small fingers that held the reins tightly. Jimmy’s gasped as he went round and round to a whirlwind of carnival music. He looked for his mother but couldn’t see her, which was a blessing. He would have been too scared to free one hand to wave in case he fell off the cold saddle and plunge to certain death.
Dutch Joe always needed cash. ‘It’s for my teeth, the bottom ones,’ he explained, running his spidery fingers along his stubbled jaw line. His missing teeth had been the source of many stories.
‘I need ten grand, I reckon for a new set. Even me wisdom teeth have gone. Real ivory I want, too.’ He tapped the milky belt buckle that he claimed his father carved from shooting an elephant in Africa.
‘They’ll go real nice with this eh?’ Joe smiled to reveal the state of his upper teeth. His Father was Dutch and his Mother was Aboriginal. He often joked about his heritage – and his teeth.
‘I’m a true blue Van Diemen mate!’
Jimmy’s Haiku spoke and tore itself from his mind to float up into the universe.
You are here in life
without wisdom. How strange
that you are still wise
Jimmy’s Haiku message, which made its way toward Dutch Joe, would go some distance to help his friend and he watched it float mystically through the air. Random pictures from his photo mind album came in to view. Jimmy sought comfort in the cowboy image.
Dutch Joe was a Fremantle icon and had some rights reserved just for him when he came along to play. He did not have to bicker over territory with other buskers. Most people who stood in Dutch Joe’s spot, moved when he arrived, without argument. Culley’s Tea Rooms stimulated the senses daily, as the fragrant assortment of home made pies and pasties, sweet pastries and cream cakes wafted out into the mall.
‘I like this place because the smell of coffee and pastry keeps me awake,’ he told Jimmy. ‘They were even here in the Great Depression, when me Dad worked in the merchant navy. He jumped ship, right here in Fremantle. Says he walked no more than half a mile when he saw my Mother. She always wanted me to be someone.’
Amongst the buskers, Dutch Joe got the respect he deserved. What crazy old black fella armed with a guitar doesn’t, he had once said.
‘You know, Jimmy, for half me life, I could hardly speak English. My Father spoke Dutch at home and taught it to my Mother. She sang Noongyar stories to me - but only when he wasn’t around.’ The old man’s face clouded. He had visited another place in time.
‘I can speak Haiku.’ The first line stood alone, incomplete and Jimmy let it travel by itself to the ears of the man who was listening.
‘Good on you Bro,’ replied Dutch Joe, absently. He strummed a tragic tune.
As if he suddenly remembered a dark horror from within, Dutch Joe burst out, ‘Don’t forget what damage the governments do!’
Jimmy’s Haiku finally settled around the old man’s feet. Dutch Joe’s brow cleared. He began to tap his feet in time with the music, which transformed into good cheer as a grin spread across his worn features to reveal a top set of decayed teeth.
‘Oh Well. It’s not a bad life after all. Eh Bro?’ The magic of Haiku had been witnessed by one and felt by another. Jimmy waved, adjusted his Big Issue satchel and moved to his next location.
Often in the evenings, Jimmy would seek the company of Dutch Joe. Unfortunately, two months ago, a 'Scarecrow' was erected in the town centre. It kept Aboriginals away. The lone Police Bus stood, unattended. Nobody could be sure what technology lurked in the dark depths of its stomach and bowels. CCTV? Perhaps a team of police. The Scarecrow did its job well and Jimmy lost sight of Dutch Joe in the evening. At night, Joe could barely manage to walk and talk at once. After singing all day, he went to the bottle shop with his earnings then joined his friends on the green. Jimmy listened to Joe’s slurry of invectives, his drawled combination of laughter and melancholy, which distilled itself within his guts, to spew out across the honorary pavestones in the centre. He glimpsed the cracked and fragmented pieces of Joe’s history, like ancient ruins in the alcohol sodden parts of his mind. When he was stable enough to reel in the right direction, Dutch Joe made a special point of pissing on the plinth of John Curtin. He would urge Jimmy to join him in the insult.
‘Carn, lesh tell the Prime Minister what we really think eh?’
Jimmy went along, but his mother’s voice would leap from the back pages of his album to holler: ‘Yer better keep still if you know what’s good for yer!’ The last time he went with Joe on this journey, Jimmy froze, almost like the statue of Curtin himself. Curtin stood high above him, the moonlight casting its eerie light upon the former Prime Minister, whose wrathful gaze almost dared Jimmy to piss at his feet. The formidable man’s arm was raised, his fist curled tightly round a wad ready to swat little folk like flies if they crossed his path. Jimmy didn’t have the courage to disrespect Curtin and stood statuesque, while Dutch Joe, his wheezy laugh, turned to a hacking coughing fit, pissed wherever his wracked body would let him. Jimmy admired Dutch Joe and when they parted ways, the stench of urine was the only souvenir Jimmy had.
Dutch Joe slapped his friend and mumbled, ‘Youse alright. Ah shee you round.’
Jimmy had no idea where Dutch Joe went at night. He only saw him singing during the day. The blank pages in his mind album were left to be filled.
Words as a means of expression are often inadequate-the expression of the heart can come through the hands and say the unspeakable
Jass tracked Jimmy down as Friday afternoon rolled into evening. Her mission was to corner him and give him a piece of her mind. He was outside the Town Hall, standing in Curtin’s shadow, touting the Big Issue. He looked as if he was trying to imitate the statue and it crossed Jass’ mind not for the first time, how sweet Jimmy probably was. Her charity stopped there. She wheeled up to him, coming to a screeching halt before his feet, her chair sliding slightly to the side as she stopped.
‘Have I told you before that I don’t give a rat’s arse bout you and your fancy Haiku talk?’
She gripped the worn arms of her chair for support in case he shouted back at her. Jimmy only watched a solitary leaf from a Morton Bay Fig tree fall into her lap. He studied it from his frozen state and tried to transpose its significance into what was happening. Jass flung out at his display of stolid silence.
‘Just forget it right?
I don’t want to hear from you.
You’re a ****ing freak!’
Jimmy unfroze. He had heard her utter something which no other person was likely to translate into meaningful sense. Jass had spoken Haiku and Jimmy’s mind exploded into sheer colour. Her blazing ginger hair seemed like the juiciest orange that had ever burst open. The gold facial piercings glittered in the afternoon sunlight and Jimmy was hypnotized, before he gathered his wits about him and clicked a few shots for his mind album. Jass backed her chair away defiantly, and their eyes met.
She glided like a swan on a glass lake
Is this real beauty? Can the essence of loveliness jump out, flash across your eyes so you lose your senses in a single sweet moment? Jimmy tumbled about like a circus clown inside. She spoke Haiku. It was true that the clouds had parted enough for a ray of light to shine upon her and Jimmy thought he was in slow motion as he witnessed this blessing from above. A vision of grace with Rapunzel-like hair hanging in heavy tresses sat before him. Frame by frame, Jimmy clicked his shutter lens eyes to capture the moment that he would give pride of place on the first page of his mind album. Her portrait was forever etched in his imagination and he felt his chest swell with love at the notion of owning such a gem collection.
In her mind, she concluded one thing. He looked wondrous goofy when she swept the leaf off her lap. Blinking and working his fingers like a dumb mutt. Without another word, Jass wheeled away from the statue, confused that Jimmy did not take the bait and answer her back.
He strained to keep her in view. She sailed off into the distance.
Jimmy held onto the pocket book in his pants for balance. When there was nothing left in sight, he shifted his satchel and went to his final location. Friday was nearly over.
Along the Cappuccino strip where Jimmy did his evening shift were several pubs. The music of tangled voices, combined with clinking glass interspersed by crowd cheers reminded Jimmy of school dinnertime, when he was a boy. Dutch Joe cultivated a lolly bag of knowledge about Fremantle and often yakked about its history. Fremantle as a port town used to have over a hundred pubs in the nineteenth century but Jimmy found it hard to believe.
‘No bull****! It’s the culture of this town, this life, right? Fremantle’s a working class town. It’s always been a thriving port and lotsa people like my Father from all over the world came here to trade and stuff, then drink and maybe find some company for the night. They picked up the women folk and bang! Next thing you know, you got fellas like me! That was in the old days. Hey! But it ain’t like that now!’
It was on the strip that Jimmy found himself exposed to drunk people.
‘C’mon mate, why don’t you sing or something?’
Jimmy, his big grin and dimples that threatened to fold his face, shyly removed his beanie and bowed slightly. His wispy soft tufts of hair stuck out in every direction.
‘****ing ace mate, ****ing ace.’
The stranger drew a five-dollar note from his wallet. ‘My wife walked out on me last week. I said **** eh? Whatcha reckon I said?’
The stranger took a step closer and Jimmy’s eyes dilated. He started poking Jimmy’s chest, who instantly heard his mother threaten, ‘You better keep still if yer know what’s good for yer!’ It was suddenly very hard to breathe.
‘Well, I said, stuff ya. Stuff you and stuff everything I ever done for ya, coz if you can’t do the right thing by me, I won’t bother see?’
The man ran his hands through his hair, shrugged, turned away toward the kerb. Jimmy sighed, reached into his bag for a copy of the Big Issue magazine and in true Haiku stream, spoke out.
Four dollars to read
a smile to help you along
with your big issue
He waited for the small miracle. The stranger watched the traffic at the intersection crawl past, captured by the dazzling headlights. He stood there, defeated, swaying. Jimmy took photos with his eyes as he witnessed a soul lose itself in the middle of Fremantle.
His soul left his body and screamed tortuously amongst the toxic exhaust fumes
Honk! The car horn jolted the stranger back from his journey of hopelessness. He looked at the note in his hand, at Jimmy, at the magazine.
‘Keep the change,’ he croaked as he grabbed the copy from Jimmy. ‘Good on ya mate.’
Jimmy tingled with pleasure. It was not the first time he used his spirit Haiku to envelop a soul in its magical aura and save it from deep despair.
A smell of spiced food reached his nostrils and Jimmy turned to its source.
Nick’s Kebabs looked like a cross between a bathroom and a café. The ceramic tiled floors and walls had long seen their day and the acoustic sound in the scantily clad restaurant was like a train station tunnel. Outdated posters draped the greasy discoloured walls and in the background movement of clanging dishes and hyperactivity, Jimmy could hear exotic music. Nick, who owned the store, patted his fat belly. His apron was tied high around his ample gut and he cut rather a comical figure as he stroked his luxuriant black moustache, which had gone limp at the ends from all the rising steam.
‘Eh Jimmy, ‘ow you going? You give me thata magazine.’
Jimmy fumbled with the latest copy and handed it to Nick, who snatched it and went through an exaggerated comedy. He dropped the magazine on the floor behind the counter and stomped on it, grinding it into the floor with his fat heel.
‘Thaza better. I gotta soak this fat up good and proper. You see that dickhead over there?’ He pointed to a young man busily engaged in dishwashing.
‘Silly bastard, slipped and smashed alla my plates last night. ”You dumb f uck!” I tell him and then I count how many dishes he smash, so I can taka the money from his pay. He cry like a baby. So now, I make sure the floor iz clean.’ He twirled one end of his moustache.
‘You understand, it cost more to buy new plates than for me to pay him, yeah?’
Each time Jimmy came in, Nick spun a tale about why he needed a copy of the Big Issue magazine. He stomped a little more and stood back. He wiped his hands on his grubby apron.
‘Thaza good! Now, you wanna kebab for half price?’
It was this gesture of kindness from Nick that ensured Jimmy ate there most nights. Guaranteed Nick had never read one magazine. Instead, he worked out creative ways to destroy them. Once he tore the magazine into shreds because he reckoned the staff complained the toilet paper wasn’t soft enough.
‘They donta know what rough paper is so I’m gonna show them.’ He created a stack of squares.
‘This will teach them to appreciate how soft their dirty arses really are!’ He laughed heartily at his many uses for the Big Issue and Jimmy smiled, his teeth peaking through his lips.
The discounted kebab balanced the books since they were eight dollars each. One magazine per kebab.
We are not separate from nature or each other – the boundaries are our imaginings.
Tottering up Essex Street was one of Dutch Joe’s drinking crowd from the green. Jimmy escaped the Kebab house, and silently attached himself to Wanda, who told him Joe had left the group earlier. Jimmy used his telephoto night lens to scan the centre green and found silent bronze statues for company. The Scarecrow stood, ever watchful. A car marked ‘Noongyar Patrol’ crawled by, swung around and offered to drive Wanda back to the Esplanade. It wasn’t wise for Yorgas to be alone, said the Noongyar Guide. The mystery of where Aboriginals went at night was finally solved and Jimmy figured to sit with Dutch Joe tomorrow night. Jimmy caught the last train on a Friday from the station.
In the still hours of Friday night, Dutch Joe came home to rest in the town centre. He wasn’t going to let any Scarecrow keep him away from where he wanted to be.
‘Mah people, mah land,’ was all he managed to swill out earlier in the evening and it was sheer defiance on his part after Wanda snatched a swig of his wine, that he got to his feet.
‘You silly bastard. Whatcha gonna do eh?’ Wanda cackled roughly, ‘go back and get arrested by those white boys?’
She nudged him so hard in the knees that he toppled back down. She told the group congregated under a tree in Esplanade Park that Dutch Joe reckoned he was Superman.
‘Why?’ somebody shot, ‘is he gonna try an’ have sex?’ The group pissed itself laughing at the idea of Joe getting a hard on, let alone carrying out the deed.
Dutch Joe languished on the grass, struggling inside to tell the younger ones it wasn’t right that they were thrown out like garbage. That if a country wanted to treat a people as if they were invisible, he wasn’t going to stand for it. He had a right. In the back of his hoarse throat, Dutch Joe tasted red dust, heat, his mother’s smell. His hand fumbled to find his grizzled face where he tenderly touched the forgotten markings his grandfather had daubed on his face when he travelled up north. He curled up in pain of the deep sorrow kind. Dutch Joe smeared it with his sense of injustice. He mumbled again to the laughing crowd, ‘Mah people. Mah land.’
Everything he felt was intricately laced within the slurred shape of each word, which was muffled by his alcoholic state. He lay as a roughly shaped man. Nobody listened, though they understood his language. Dutch Joe struggled to his feet and staggered toward the town.
‘You watch, he’ll show up in the High Street tomorrow,’ said Wanda. She would check on him later just to make sure he was okay. He was family and those roots ran deep – deeper than the ancient tree they sat under.
When Jimmy arrived in Fremantle on Saturday morning, he heard the news about his friend. Dutch Joe had managed to make his final stand. He had run into some trouble when, without the protection of his crowd, two men saw opportunity and decided to make a stand of their own. He was punched and kicked till he stopped moving. In death as in life, Dutch Joe was not a menacing sight and lay there, as if he were asleep.
‘I reckon a dead Abo looks just the same as a live one. It’s hard to tell the difference,’ commented a morbid onlooker at the taped boundary.
‘Bloody coons! I’m sick of their mindless violence,’ remarked another on her way to Target.
Joe had looked like another drunk passed out on the grassy lawn. People walked by the broken body, blind to the social markers that might ruin their Friday night. His life force gushed back into the very earth from which he had emerged. Mentally, Dutch Joe fought to move, his soul suddenly too small for the useless vessel it occupied. Nobody saw that he was dying and as his heart slowed, his bladder and bowels emptied, Dutch Joe finally allowed himself to relax and be still. His clouding memory recalled the meaning of his journey. His people. His land.
Jimmy was awed at the might of the Scarecrow and the frightening lengths it would go to protect its crop. Lurking unobtrusively next to the statue of Curtin, he felt their dual power. As he walked away from the centre, he sorted through his mind album for the picture of his friend relaxing under a tree. Dutch Joe’s profile was a mere silhouette against the rich green leaves, which cast their shade upon his stringy hair. His wrist hung languidly off one bent knee as he rested, his guitar lying beside him. Jimmy was entranced by this true state of peace. He snapped the photo there and then as proof that we all have this peace within us but it only emerges when we are still. He would remember Dutch Joe like this forever now.
Jimmy chewed his bottom lip as he worked out the Haiku language he would need to deal with the loss of his friend.
Your body lies dead
Where your soul used to live
Now your spirit does
In true timely fashion, Jimmy heard a song from an angel. He walked toward the magical point, invisibly marked on his mind map.
Jass sang in the mall and made a point of being a helpless maiden in need of rescue. She sang ‘Amazing Grace’ as a tribute to Dutch Joe, who often sang it himself. She felt reckless and behaved with unreasonable abandon. When a couple of guys approached her, she played up to them for what it was worth. They probably fantasised about passing her around like a bottle of rum at a stag night, she thought viciously through her dreamy smile. She wore a lacy low cut top, which pushed the creamy outline of her breasts to the attention of anyone who came close. She was coy, and played to the role of victim. She fooled those who doled out sympathy.
‘You’re the first people to speak to me like you really understand me.’
She batted her eyelids and looked as fragile as could be. As if she had been cast into a cruel world to endure the torture that it inflicted upon her, beautiful Jass waited, hopeful for someone to arrive and carry her away. It was a spiteful performance but when she saw Jimmy enter the mall, she flushed.
She dropped the act immediately and snapped to her admirers, ‘Go! Go! F uck off ya hear!’ One of the guys spat in her tin before leaving but Jass barely noticed, so intent was she on getting Jimmy’s attention.
Hey! Jimmy ya freak!
Can you really speak Haiku
Or are you joking?
Jimmy stopped and gazed over at the girl who had spoken to him again in the magical language that he felt he struggled with so often. How did she do it, he wondered. Jass just lit up and spoke her heart to him in a way that caused his picture album to almost explode. He sought to fight through the snapshots that now fluttered through his head, like paper in the wind. The cafe image flashed before him.
She reached across the table to breathe heavily in his ear, words that blew him into a million sparks
It was the easiest thing in the world to do. Communicate love. Jimmy walked up to her and thrust a Big Issue magazine into her hand. Jass considered the gift then bent to count the silver coins in her biscuit tin and gave him four dollars. A silent treaty passed between them during the exchange. Jass didn’t want to settle a score with him anymore. Jimmy felt the loss of his friend and needed inspiration on how to give meaning to events, which he would transpose again and again. His book of Haiku verse burned like molten lava. He would have to show her.
‘You can speak Haiku.’ He made the statement of fact.
‘Really? I couldn’t be sure’ She discovered sweetness in uncertainty.
‘I will teach you more.’ His pictures were hers to share in wonder.
They had composed their first verse together. Amidst the heady movement of life, birds twitter. Jimmy reached in to pull out the awesome treasure that lay in his pocket.
The End
Jimmy was absently fingering the little book in his pocket as usual when some middle-aged guy, equipped with clipboard and a rough Lancashire accent boarded at the Esplanade Busport. The bus was past seating and now passengers choked up the aisle. They seemed reluctant to move towards the back, despite a voice telling them to do just that. It was because of the noisy school kids horsing about. The clipboard bloke called over the bubbling adolescent chatter that students should give their seats up for adults.
Passengers in the aisle pushed slowly forward, looking for some silent sign in the sea of young faces that they had heard. Jimmy plucked the random quote from his mind and shrank further back into his window seat. Teenage activity had a strong force field. Laughter, shouting, playful punches and iPods, held fast by the sweet sticky scent of bubble gum and body spray. Those kids with blazers embossed in Latin made it clear that there was strength in numbers. They came from all points of the compass to converge on the Fremantle-bound bus. A united front, the uniforms made them arrogant, conceited, self-absorbed and inconsiderate. Everything a private student ought to be. Nobody stood up.
At the front of the bus, adult passengers yielded their seats to the elderly and to those women who stirred the hearts of men.
The driver, looking like someone from the Australian cricket team, drove off, his green cap pulled tightly down over his eyes so he did not have to deal with anyone on this route. Next Friday, his roster would not include the school run; he’d make sure of that.
Jimmy caught a whiff of sweet coconut. A young Asian woman near him tried to squeeze past other passengers. The bus rocked and came to a stop. The back doors opened. A rush of warm spring air reminded those standing nearby that the heat of the bus was greater and bodies pressed against bodies was stifling. The Asian woman, her smile fixed, apologised profusely as she struggled to reach the exit. Too late. The doors closed. Passengers looked at her emotionlessly. In these conditions - chivalry famine at four o’clock, only one person called out on her behalf but not loud enough. She seemed too quietly spoken to help herself. She rang the bell again. Jimmy inhaled the exotic moist coconut scent for another stop. He pressed the palms of his hands together and tucked them firmly between his legs. She was very pretty. ‘Better keep still if you know what’s good fer ya!’ echoed his mother’s voice through his subconscious. He froze stock-still and watched the view from the window, tapping in to the streams of conversation around him.
‘And like, yeah! I could tell he was hurt really, really bad!’
‘When I went on holidays, I got this picture text and I thought, like, what’s this got to do with anything?’
‘Nobody talks to him. I never talked to him in my entire life!’
The communication strands streaked around Jimmy’s body and he let his shoulders droop slightly so that he could better understand their context in his mind. When Jimmy loosened his neck muscles, he began to transform the streams into a Haiku that he could look at and play with.
I have not spoken
About images in mind
Which give me much pain
One day when he was in Fremantle, an old woman with white hair and a green shopping bag hobbled through the mall. Jimmy had been taking still snapshot photos of people with his speedy shutter eyes when she walked into his line of view.
She reached across (Click!) and placed a pocket-sized book in his hand (Click!) before losing herself in the pedestrian river (Click!).
He mentally developed those three shots of her and now the woman was imprinted on his brain forever. Jimmy took the grubby thumb worn book wherever he went. It contained simple verse, which cracked open like eggs into colourful pictures in Jimmy’s head and left him feeling warm all over.
The bus stopped, started, slowed, speeded up. The conversation streams floated enticingly around him and Jimmy played with the Haiku in his mind, his fingers curling responsively round the strands of the verse, which he visually tried to snatch hold of so that the real picture would burst forth. It was getting harder and harder to stay frozen. Jimmy let the words come from different places to make clearer sense – he didn’t have to wear them in that order. It was so confusing sometimes – building them one way, so he could see it, only to rearrange it in the way that truly showed what he meant. Jimmy took his time, worked hard at thoughts, ideas, pictures, and especially Hangman. Boy had his mother taught him a lesson in that game. Jimmy’s fingers moved slightly but instinctively toward his balls, pinching the cotton material of his tracksuit pants as he remembered what happened when he didn’t guess the word. He set his jaw, squinting to see how the verse could be rebuilt to reflect what he felt and understood. The book was digging painfully into his side. The bus pulled up at a set of lights and two students sharing a set of headphones suddenly sang out, ‘You took the words right out of my mouth.’
He stiffened. That was it, another stream from a different place to help him rebuild what he had started in his mind. His pocket, his mouth, his head, his heart. It didn’t matter where the words had come from, so long as he put them in the right place. Jimmy could do this. He knew he could. The hands that needed to work the true Haiku out of his body quietly began moulding and shaping.
Spoken pain in mind
As he worked, Jimmy clenched his teeth, forcing his breath through the uneven gaps.
Which I have much about me
He discreetly bent further forward, all energy invested in rearranging the verse.
Images give not
As he composed the final line, Jimmy shuddered visibly, a silent micro scream travelling from his guts to rip from his throat as the familiar warmth spread over him.
He sat back, gazed out the window, relieved. He had done it; produced something wonderful, which spoke what he had originally heard around him in a way that reflected what he understood.
Slowly, he took stock of his surroundings. The bus had picked up speed. It wound through Booragoon. Mindless, boring homes with uninteresting secrets blurred past, which looked different, yet familiar. Booragoon wasn’t like Fremantle. Nothing through the window crossed the lens of his snapshot shutter eyes so they didn’t click on this part of the journey. They blinked. Slowly, contentedly. He wasn’t frozen in position anymore. He rubbed his knee. The streams, which inspired Jimmy, no longer hung around him and he noticed other strands of conversation had all but ceased. It often happened when he created Haiku. Jimmy usually found harmony. Only two or three people nattered away as if they hadn’t a care in the world. The loud mechanical groans of the bus took up most of the area reserved for babble. The effervescent teenage crowd had fizzed out to mere whispers and snickers. The bus lurched and passengers faltered awkwardly in the aisle, battling a whole day’s fatigue, while protecting their small personal space. Jimmy had more space than others. A wide berth in fact. In a crowded bus meandering through peak rush-hour traffic, the seat next to him was strangely vacant but Jimmy kept close to the window, enjoying the sensation of his Haiku book with its picture words poking sharply into his ribs. He slipped one hand into his pocket and stroked the outlines, feeling its shape and the words through his fingertips.
In Fremantle, Jimmy went to the mall, where he stood silent and still, holding the Big Issue magazine in his right hand. Occasionally, somebody would stop and purchase a copy from the yellow satchel slung across his shoulders. Jimmy kept quiet the whole time and watched life through his shutter lens eyes. Inside his body, he clicked madly and joyfully at pictures of interest; like the Homewares shop, which held a display of household goods on a stand outside the doorway. It was stacked with cups, plates and serving dishes. The sign read: “Stock must go!” He captured precious moments.
Her hair falling around her face, nobody noticed as she slipped a plate into her bag.
Jimmy stored the snapshot to his mind album.
Fremantle was infested with life on Friday afternoon. Those who sheltered from the havoc of home and sometimes nestled in the arms of doorways, snapped or kissed prying hands, which stuck too far in. In the mall, Jimmy’s eyes clicked on a particular young woman as if to highlight her in Bold and Italics.
Jass could really sing. The wheels of the young woman’s chair were wedged on lock as her upper torso stretched to the sky, her hands reaching up, entreating. She hit a top note and Jimmy blinked. Another snapshot photo for his album.
Angel beckons for
The hidden need to reveal
The truth but still love
Perhaps her fingertips would pluck something wonderful from the heavens. It seemed that she would to Jimmy, who looked around and saw others who noticed the girl in the wheel chair.
‘Thank you, thank you,’ Jass quipped as the coins rattled in her pressed biscuit tin. Jass rolled into the mall most days, the dodgy brake lock weighted by the black chunky heeled shoes she wore. They looked almost comical hanging loosely from her useless legs, which flopped to each side of the foot stirrups of her chair as her upper body moved to the songs she sang without musical accompaniment. Cruel taunts rose from the moving crowd to splatter across her face.
‘Get a job yer skank’
‘Faker. Stop using a wheelchair for pity.’
Jass started with chirpy tunes that became melancholic as the day wore on. Jimmy always gave her a dollar. Jass always said ‘Thanks.’ Today when he approached after her rendition of ‘When You’re Gone,’ Jass managed a cursory smile. In her book, he was harmless and awkward. A shy guy with a toothy grin who probably had a crush on her. Jass was adored by some odd people. She recalled Rodney who had paranoid schizophrenia. He wore her out intellectually and emotionally within two weeks. At least he had a legitimate excuse. The people that annoyed Jass the most were middle class Jocks who offered her money for sex. She was quite attractive in a Bjork fashion. She just couldn’t walk, which she knew was probably part of the attraction.
On impulse, Jass didn’t let Jimmy slip away into the crowd as he normally would.
‘I’m having a real crap time today Jimmy. You wanna grab a coffee or summat?’
Destiny watched, amused as their awkward paths crossed.
What a toothy grin did for his spirit was too great to measure but Jimmy stood there, dumbfounded, while Jass fixed her limbs into place, unlocked the brake and manoeuvred the chair in his direction.
‘Let’s go to Aroma. I’ve got six bucks here. It’s pretty bad for a Friday.’ With one push, Jass jettisoned off.
‘Get out me way!’ she snapped. ‘Hurry!’ A woman was sideswiped as she mowed through the crowd.
‘Pension day will be better, I spect.’
‘I spect’ replied Jimmy parrot style. He struggled to sort through each word to make a daisy chain, which formed a visionary shape of how he saw Jass. He tried to convert the nature of his feelings into Haiku. The strands bloomed. Jimmy remained speechless and watched Jass flower before his eyes.
Jass was a primadonna when it came to moving on wheels. Through the crowd, she ploughed as if she had been born in the chair. At the café, Jass hoisted herself into the booth with one deft movement. Jimmy averted his eyes while she plopped her legs in the position she wanted them to sit.
A waitress approached. Her manner was as frothy as the coffee she served which made Jass wince.
‘I’ll have a cappuccino. What bout you Jimmy?’
‘Me too’
‘You got that or what?’ Jass challenged the waitress, who was roughly the same age and very pretty. The waitress’ subtle gaze slid back to her notebook.
Jass twirled the knotted end of one ginger tress and considered Jimmy. ‘Well, now you got me here, whatcha gunna do with me?’
It was a saucy gesture and she smirked at the man across the table because he was so goofy looking, especially with his front teeth protruding. It was kind of sweet the way his mouth opened to say something but didn’t and his eyes, well they looked too big for his face. Jass wondered how old Jimmy was. Thirty something, perhaps? She knew he had been selling the Big Issue in Freo ever since she started singing there. As Jass waited for a reply, she figured his goofy side was mostly shyness. She softened a little.
‘Well?’
‘I can speak Haiku.
I will write for you a verse.
You will feel magic.’
Jimmy hoped she would understand. For a minute, Jass stared blankly at him while he sat frozen. She knew he spoke weird and now it had a name. Friday’s afternoon sun streamed through the window to catch the new mischief dawning in her eyes.
‘Haiku? My God, I love Haiku! I’m gonna tell you a secret.’ Jass leaned forward and whispered teasingly, ‘When a girl hears a man speak in Haiku tongue, it drives her wild and makes her want him more.’
Jimmy’s heart missed a beat. The book in his pocket clicked on, urging Jimmy to take the delectable strands and weave them into another Haiku. He thought his pants pocket would burn a hole in itself as his mind album opened and some pictures shot out which he didn’t often look at. Before he knew what was happening, he bolted upwards and fled the café. A sympathetic look from the waitress sparked a response from Jass.
‘What are you looking at, ya ugly cow?’
Jass stirred in three sugars with her feisty imagination and tasted a bittersweet picture.
On the other side of the mall, standing before a battered case was a busker called Dutch Joe. His silver hair suited his craggy, weather-beaten lines. He played guitar and harmonica, and picked out old classics. When Dutch Joe put his mind to it, he could even play some mean Latin American tunes but today, he was all about Country and Western so Willie Nelson it was. After Jimmy fled, he found comfort in the old man’s company. He liked to listen to Dutch Joe play because some music reminded him of a carousel ride he once went on as a child. The piebald horse was uncomfortable; its mane matted between the small fingers that held the reins tightly. Jimmy’s gasped as he went round and round to a whirlwind of carnival music. He looked for his mother but couldn’t see her, which was a blessing. He would have been too scared to free one hand to wave in case he fell off the cold saddle and plunge to certain death.
Dutch Joe always needed cash. ‘It’s for my teeth, the bottom ones,’ he explained, running his spidery fingers along his stubbled jaw line. His missing teeth had been the source of many stories.
‘I need ten grand, I reckon for a new set. Even me wisdom teeth have gone. Real ivory I want, too.’ He tapped the milky belt buckle that he claimed his father carved from shooting an elephant in Africa.
‘They’ll go real nice with this eh?’ Joe smiled to reveal the state of his upper teeth. His Father was Dutch and his Mother was Aboriginal. He often joked about his heritage – and his teeth.
‘I’m a true blue Van Diemen mate!’
Jimmy’s Haiku spoke and tore itself from his mind to float up into the universe.
You are here in life
without wisdom. How strange
that you are still wise
Jimmy’s Haiku message, which made its way toward Dutch Joe, would go some distance to help his friend and he watched it float mystically through the air. Random pictures from his photo mind album came in to view. Jimmy sought comfort in the cowboy image.
Dutch Joe was a Fremantle icon and had some rights reserved just for him when he came along to play. He did not have to bicker over territory with other buskers. Most people who stood in Dutch Joe’s spot, moved when he arrived, without argument. Culley’s Tea Rooms stimulated the senses daily, as the fragrant assortment of home made pies and pasties, sweet pastries and cream cakes wafted out into the mall.
‘I like this place because the smell of coffee and pastry keeps me awake,’ he told Jimmy. ‘They were even here in the Great Depression, when me Dad worked in the merchant navy. He jumped ship, right here in Fremantle. Says he walked no more than half a mile when he saw my Mother. She always wanted me to be someone.’
Amongst the buskers, Dutch Joe got the respect he deserved. What crazy old black fella armed with a guitar doesn’t, he had once said.
‘You know, Jimmy, for half me life, I could hardly speak English. My Father spoke Dutch at home and taught it to my Mother. She sang Noongyar stories to me - but only when he wasn’t around.’ The old man’s face clouded. He had visited another place in time.
‘I can speak Haiku.’ The first line stood alone, incomplete and Jimmy let it travel by itself to the ears of the man who was listening.
‘Good on you Bro,’ replied Dutch Joe, absently. He strummed a tragic tune.
As if he suddenly remembered a dark horror from within, Dutch Joe burst out, ‘Don’t forget what damage the governments do!’
Jimmy’s Haiku finally settled around the old man’s feet. Dutch Joe’s brow cleared. He began to tap his feet in time with the music, which transformed into good cheer as a grin spread across his worn features to reveal a top set of decayed teeth.
‘Oh Well. It’s not a bad life after all. Eh Bro?’ The magic of Haiku had been witnessed by one and felt by another. Jimmy waved, adjusted his Big Issue satchel and moved to his next location.
Often in the evenings, Jimmy would seek the company of Dutch Joe. Unfortunately, two months ago, a 'Scarecrow' was erected in the town centre. It kept Aboriginals away. The lone Police Bus stood, unattended. Nobody could be sure what technology lurked in the dark depths of its stomach and bowels. CCTV? Perhaps a team of police. The Scarecrow did its job well and Jimmy lost sight of Dutch Joe in the evening. At night, Joe could barely manage to walk and talk at once. After singing all day, he went to the bottle shop with his earnings then joined his friends on the green. Jimmy listened to Joe’s slurry of invectives, his drawled combination of laughter and melancholy, which distilled itself within his guts, to spew out across the honorary pavestones in the centre. He glimpsed the cracked and fragmented pieces of Joe’s history, like ancient ruins in the alcohol sodden parts of his mind. When he was stable enough to reel in the right direction, Dutch Joe made a special point of pissing on the plinth of John Curtin. He would urge Jimmy to join him in the insult.
‘Carn, lesh tell the Prime Minister what we really think eh?’
Jimmy went along, but his mother’s voice would leap from the back pages of his album to holler: ‘Yer better keep still if you know what’s good for yer!’ The last time he went with Joe on this journey, Jimmy froze, almost like the statue of Curtin himself. Curtin stood high above him, the moonlight casting its eerie light upon the former Prime Minister, whose wrathful gaze almost dared Jimmy to piss at his feet. The formidable man’s arm was raised, his fist curled tightly round a wad ready to swat little folk like flies if they crossed his path. Jimmy didn’t have the courage to disrespect Curtin and stood statuesque, while Dutch Joe, his wheezy laugh, turned to a hacking coughing fit, pissed wherever his wracked body would let him. Jimmy admired Dutch Joe and when they parted ways, the stench of urine was the only souvenir Jimmy had.
Dutch Joe slapped his friend and mumbled, ‘Youse alright. Ah shee you round.’
Jimmy had no idea where Dutch Joe went at night. He only saw him singing during the day. The blank pages in his mind album were left to be filled.
Words as a means of expression are often inadequate-the expression of the heart can come through the hands and say the unspeakable
Jass tracked Jimmy down as Friday afternoon rolled into evening. Her mission was to corner him and give him a piece of her mind. He was outside the Town Hall, standing in Curtin’s shadow, touting the Big Issue. He looked as if he was trying to imitate the statue and it crossed Jass’ mind not for the first time, how sweet Jimmy probably was. Her charity stopped there. She wheeled up to him, coming to a screeching halt before his feet, her chair sliding slightly to the side as she stopped.
‘Have I told you before that I don’t give a rat’s arse bout you and your fancy Haiku talk?’
She gripped the worn arms of her chair for support in case he shouted back at her. Jimmy only watched a solitary leaf from a Morton Bay Fig tree fall into her lap. He studied it from his frozen state and tried to transpose its significance into what was happening. Jass flung out at his display of stolid silence.
‘Just forget it right?
I don’t want to hear from you.
You’re a ****ing freak!’
Jimmy unfroze. He had heard her utter something which no other person was likely to translate into meaningful sense. Jass had spoken Haiku and Jimmy’s mind exploded into sheer colour. Her blazing ginger hair seemed like the juiciest orange that had ever burst open. The gold facial piercings glittered in the afternoon sunlight and Jimmy was hypnotized, before he gathered his wits about him and clicked a few shots for his mind album. Jass backed her chair away defiantly, and their eyes met.
She glided like a swan on a glass lake
Is this real beauty? Can the essence of loveliness jump out, flash across your eyes so you lose your senses in a single sweet moment? Jimmy tumbled about like a circus clown inside. She spoke Haiku. It was true that the clouds had parted enough for a ray of light to shine upon her and Jimmy thought he was in slow motion as he witnessed this blessing from above. A vision of grace with Rapunzel-like hair hanging in heavy tresses sat before him. Frame by frame, Jimmy clicked his shutter lens eyes to capture the moment that he would give pride of place on the first page of his mind album. Her portrait was forever etched in his imagination and he felt his chest swell with love at the notion of owning such a gem collection.
In her mind, she concluded one thing. He looked wondrous goofy when she swept the leaf off her lap. Blinking and working his fingers like a dumb mutt. Without another word, Jass wheeled away from the statue, confused that Jimmy did not take the bait and answer her back.
He strained to keep her in view. She sailed off into the distance.
Jimmy held onto the pocket book in his pants for balance. When there was nothing left in sight, he shifted his satchel and went to his final location. Friday was nearly over.
Along the Cappuccino strip where Jimmy did his evening shift were several pubs. The music of tangled voices, combined with clinking glass interspersed by crowd cheers reminded Jimmy of school dinnertime, when he was a boy. Dutch Joe cultivated a lolly bag of knowledge about Fremantle and often yakked about its history. Fremantle as a port town used to have over a hundred pubs in the nineteenth century but Jimmy found it hard to believe.
‘No bull****! It’s the culture of this town, this life, right? Fremantle’s a working class town. It’s always been a thriving port and lotsa people like my Father from all over the world came here to trade and stuff, then drink and maybe find some company for the night. They picked up the women folk and bang! Next thing you know, you got fellas like me! That was in the old days. Hey! But it ain’t like that now!’
It was on the strip that Jimmy found himself exposed to drunk people.
‘C’mon mate, why don’t you sing or something?’
Jimmy, his big grin and dimples that threatened to fold his face, shyly removed his beanie and bowed slightly. His wispy soft tufts of hair stuck out in every direction.
‘****ing ace mate, ****ing ace.’
The stranger drew a five-dollar note from his wallet. ‘My wife walked out on me last week. I said **** eh? Whatcha reckon I said?’
The stranger took a step closer and Jimmy’s eyes dilated. He started poking Jimmy’s chest, who instantly heard his mother threaten, ‘You better keep still if yer know what’s good for yer!’ It was suddenly very hard to breathe.
‘Well, I said, stuff ya. Stuff you and stuff everything I ever done for ya, coz if you can’t do the right thing by me, I won’t bother see?’
The man ran his hands through his hair, shrugged, turned away toward the kerb. Jimmy sighed, reached into his bag for a copy of the Big Issue magazine and in true Haiku stream, spoke out.
Four dollars to read
a smile to help you along
with your big issue
He waited for the small miracle. The stranger watched the traffic at the intersection crawl past, captured by the dazzling headlights. He stood there, defeated, swaying. Jimmy took photos with his eyes as he witnessed a soul lose itself in the middle of Fremantle.
His soul left his body and screamed tortuously amongst the toxic exhaust fumes
Honk! The car horn jolted the stranger back from his journey of hopelessness. He looked at the note in his hand, at Jimmy, at the magazine.
‘Keep the change,’ he croaked as he grabbed the copy from Jimmy. ‘Good on ya mate.’
Jimmy tingled with pleasure. It was not the first time he used his spirit Haiku to envelop a soul in its magical aura and save it from deep despair.
A smell of spiced food reached his nostrils and Jimmy turned to its source.
Nick’s Kebabs looked like a cross between a bathroom and a café. The ceramic tiled floors and walls had long seen their day and the acoustic sound in the scantily clad restaurant was like a train station tunnel. Outdated posters draped the greasy discoloured walls and in the background movement of clanging dishes and hyperactivity, Jimmy could hear exotic music. Nick, who owned the store, patted his fat belly. His apron was tied high around his ample gut and he cut rather a comical figure as he stroked his luxuriant black moustache, which had gone limp at the ends from all the rising steam.
‘Eh Jimmy, ‘ow you going? You give me thata magazine.’
Jimmy fumbled with the latest copy and handed it to Nick, who snatched it and went through an exaggerated comedy. He dropped the magazine on the floor behind the counter and stomped on it, grinding it into the floor with his fat heel.
‘Thaza better. I gotta soak this fat up good and proper. You see that dickhead over there?’ He pointed to a young man busily engaged in dishwashing.
‘Silly bastard, slipped and smashed alla my plates last night. ”You dumb f uck!” I tell him and then I count how many dishes he smash, so I can taka the money from his pay. He cry like a baby. So now, I make sure the floor iz clean.’ He twirled one end of his moustache.
‘You understand, it cost more to buy new plates than for me to pay him, yeah?’
Each time Jimmy came in, Nick spun a tale about why he needed a copy of the Big Issue magazine. He stomped a little more and stood back. He wiped his hands on his grubby apron.
‘Thaza good! Now, you wanna kebab for half price?’
It was this gesture of kindness from Nick that ensured Jimmy ate there most nights. Guaranteed Nick had never read one magazine. Instead, he worked out creative ways to destroy them. Once he tore the magazine into shreds because he reckoned the staff complained the toilet paper wasn’t soft enough.
‘They donta know what rough paper is so I’m gonna show them.’ He created a stack of squares.
‘This will teach them to appreciate how soft their dirty arses really are!’ He laughed heartily at his many uses for the Big Issue and Jimmy smiled, his teeth peaking through his lips.
The discounted kebab balanced the books since they were eight dollars each. One magazine per kebab.
We are not separate from nature or each other – the boundaries are our imaginings.
Tottering up Essex Street was one of Dutch Joe’s drinking crowd from the green. Jimmy escaped the Kebab house, and silently attached himself to Wanda, who told him Joe had left the group earlier. Jimmy used his telephoto night lens to scan the centre green and found silent bronze statues for company. The Scarecrow stood, ever watchful. A car marked ‘Noongyar Patrol’ crawled by, swung around and offered to drive Wanda back to the Esplanade. It wasn’t wise for Yorgas to be alone, said the Noongyar Guide. The mystery of where Aboriginals went at night was finally solved and Jimmy figured to sit with Dutch Joe tomorrow night. Jimmy caught the last train on a Friday from the station.
In the still hours of Friday night, Dutch Joe came home to rest in the town centre. He wasn’t going to let any Scarecrow keep him away from where he wanted to be.
‘Mah people, mah land,’ was all he managed to swill out earlier in the evening and it was sheer defiance on his part after Wanda snatched a swig of his wine, that he got to his feet.
‘You silly bastard. Whatcha gonna do eh?’ Wanda cackled roughly, ‘go back and get arrested by those white boys?’
She nudged him so hard in the knees that he toppled back down. She told the group congregated under a tree in Esplanade Park that Dutch Joe reckoned he was Superman.
‘Why?’ somebody shot, ‘is he gonna try an’ have sex?’ The group pissed itself laughing at the idea of Joe getting a hard on, let alone carrying out the deed.
Dutch Joe languished on the grass, struggling inside to tell the younger ones it wasn’t right that they were thrown out like garbage. That if a country wanted to treat a people as if they were invisible, he wasn’t going to stand for it. He had a right. In the back of his hoarse throat, Dutch Joe tasted red dust, heat, his mother’s smell. His hand fumbled to find his grizzled face where he tenderly touched the forgotten markings his grandfather had daubed on his face when he travelled up north. He curled up in pain of the deep sorrow kind. Dutch Joe smeared it with his sense of injustice. He mumbled again to the laughing crowd, ‘Mah people. Mah land.’
Everything he felt was intricately laced within the slurred shape of each word, which was muffled by his alcoholic state. He lay as a roughly shaped man. Nobody listened, though they understood his language. Dutch Joe struggled to his feet and staggered toward the town.
‘You watch, he’ll show up in the High Street tomorrow,’ said Wanda. She would check on him later just to make sure he was okay. He was family and those roots ran deep – deeper than the ancient tree they sat under.
When Jimmy arrived in Fremantle on Saturday morning, he heard the news about his friend. Dutch Joe had managed to make his final stand. He had run into some trouble when, without the protection of his crowd, two men saw opportunity and decided to make a stand of their own. He was punched and kicked till he stopped moving. In death as in life, Dutch Joe was not a menacing sight and lay there, as if he were asleep.
‘I reckon a dead Abo looks just the same as a live one. It’s hard to tell the difference,’ commented a morbid onlooker at the taped boundary.
‘Bloody coons! I’m sick of their mindless violence,’ remarked another on her way to Target.
Joe had looked like another drunk passed out on the grassy lawn. People walked by the broken body, blind to the social markers that might ruin their Friday night. His life force gushed back into the very earth from which he had emerged. Mentally, Dutch Joe fought to move, his soul suddenly too small for the useless vessel it occupied. Nobody saw that he was dying and as his heart slowed, his bladder and bowels emptied, Dutch Joe finally allowed himself to relax and be still. His clouding memory recalled the meaning of his journey. His people. His land.
Jimmy was awed at the might of the Scarecrow and the frightening lengths it would go to protect its crop. Lurking unobtrusively next to the statue of Curtin, he felt their dual power. As he walked away from the centre, he sorted through his mind album for the picture of his friend relaxing under a tree. Dutch Joe’s profile was a mere silhouette against the rich green leaves, which cast their shade upon his stringy hair. His wrist hung languidly off one bent knee as he rested, his guitar lying beside him. Jimmy was entranced by this true state of peace. He snapped the photo there and then as proof that we all have this peace within us but it only emerges when we are still. He would remember Dutch Joe like this forever now.
Jimmy chewed his bottom lip as he worked out the Haiku language he would need to deal with the loss of his friend.
Your body lies dead
Where your soul used to live
Now your spirit does
In true timely fashion, Jimmy heard a song from an angel. He walked toward the magical point, invisibly marked on his mind map.
Jass sang in the mall and made a point of being a helpless maiden in need of rescue. She sang ‘Amazing Grace’ as a tribute to Dutch Joe, who often sang it himself. She felt reckless and behaved with unreasonable abandon. When a couple of guys approached her, she played up to them for what it was worth. They probably fantasised about passing her around like a bottle of rum at a stag night, she thought viciously through her dreamy smile. She wore a lacy low cut top, which pushed the creamy outline of her breasts to the attention of anyone who came close. She was coy, and played to the role of victim. She fooled those who doled out sympathy.
‘You’re the first people to speak to me like you really understand me.’
She batted her eyelids and looked as fragile as could be. As if she had been cast into a cruel world to endure the torture that it inflicted upon her, beautiful Jass waited, hopeful for someone to arrive and carry her away. It was a spiteful performance but when she saw Jimmy enter the mall, she flushed.
She dropped the act immediately and snapped to her admirers, ‘Go! Go! F uck off ya hear!’ One of the guys spat in her tin before leaving but Jass barely noticed, so intent was she on getting Jimmy’s attention.
Hey! Jimmy ya freak!
Can you really speak Haiku
Or are you joking?
Jimmy stopped and gazed over at the girl who had spoken to him again in the magical language that he felt he struggled with so often. How did she do it, he wondered. Jass just lit up and spoke her heart to him in a way that caused his picture album to almost explode. He sought to fight through the snapshots that now fluttered through his head, like paper in the wind. The cafe image flashed before him.
She reached across the table to breathe heavily in his ear, words that blew him into a million sparks
It was the easiest thing in the world to do. Communicate love. Jimmy walked up to her and thrust a Big Issue magazine into her hand. Jass considered the gift then bent to count the silver coins in her biscuit tin and gave him four dollars. A silent treaty passed between them during the exchange. Jass didn’t want to settle a score with him anymore. Jimmy felt the loss of his friend and needed inspiration on how to give meaning to events, which he would transpose again and again. His book of Haiku verse burned like molten lava. He would have to show her.
‘You can speak Haiku.’ He made the statement of fact.
‘Really? I couldn’t be sure’ She discovered sweetness in uncertainty.
‘I will teach you more.’ His pictures were hers to share in wonder.
They had composed their first verse together. Amidst the heady movement of life, birds twitter. Jimmy reached in to pull out the awesome treasure that lay in his pocket.
The End