Free Loving, Faithful Animal by Josephine Rowe Page B

the pin. Wire him up then say, Now you go over there and say hello to those big funny-looking men. And so you just wouldn’t
    Let me repeat, in simple terms
    A kid would totter right out onto the range and you just wouldn’t
    Let me repeat, in simple terms
    Seven letters. Incontinent men suffering memory loss.
    You just wouldn’t know.
    Remember standing in the doorway watching the girls sleep. Please be okay. Please be okay. I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry.
    A roll of half-shot 35mm coiled up like a viper in the camera. Eleven years in the bottom of the duffel, coiled up like that. Couldn’t trust it. Couldn’t even remember what was on it. Might’ve been temples and rubber trees. Pictures in the clouds, guys slouching under slouch hats, just lying round bored brainless. Village kids, drowsy buffalo. Skinny girls in dark rooms and silk underwear. Remember the weight of the Minolta, the leather strap getting sticky in the humidity. And Reed helping to thread the film onto the tiny white toothy wheels. Just not what was shot on it.
    Found it lying there on the kitchen table. Careful lettering, greylead lines showing through red and yellow texta. Population. Staple Foods. Drawings of a bowl of rice, noodles, a skeleton fish. The words for hello. The words for goodbye. From 1956 to 1975 there was a war there and my dad was in it. The mosquitoes were awful, and he missed home . Took it out into the backyard before she woke up for school.
    Oh, that was low, you bully. Even for you that was low …
    Welcome Home, temazepam! Welcome Home, Valium! Welcome Home, clozapine! That’s a parade. Wave your own bloody flag.
    â€¦ a consequence of alcohol and tobacco consumption and of the stresses of the Vietnam War (some of them peculiar to that war) …
    Sweating all the way to the chemist, guts twisted up. But the old guy just shakes his head and hands over an envelope of blanks. Twenty-four frames of nothingness. Guess it wasn’t wound on properly . Walked back out into the shopping centre carpark and there it all was, sudden. True magic, alright. Like a slide reel behind the eyes. Foxy drinking from a boot after losing a bet. Reed’s mongoose going to town on a hunk of cheese. The B-52 crater, water at the bottom stained to red muck. Counted forty-two. Then the bulldozers came and covered it all over.
    Repat, four weeks. Leatherwork. Birdhouse.
    Trying to say sorry with objects. Evelyn: stockings. Tetch: cigarettes (tailors ’ cause he makes an embarrassment of rollies). Lani: fuck knows. Ru: those weird horror books she likes. Too old for them now , Ev says later. Good try though.
    Hitting a wombat just outside Blackwood, driving the girls up to visit Mum.
    Dad? Dad! We’ve gotta go back. Even if it’s dead, we’ve gotta check the pouch.
    Wombats don’t have pouches, possum chops.
    They do. Turn around. We’ve gotta go back and check.
    Can’t stop. They got claws like razors. A sick one’ll rip you to bits.
    Go on then. Fucken look then: skinny arms still reaching out to someone. Black cotton pyjamas ripped open at the stomach. You gonna check what he had in that basket?
    Can we not and say we did?
    Jesus, I’ll do it . Reed holding up—what was it that time? A chook. A frag. A tin of rice. Don’t remember.
    When you think of happiness, what picture do you have in your mind?
    You already asked that one.
    But you declined to answer.
    Ev backed up against the door. Lani nine years old and getting in between. Already, that look in her eyes, her hands making sharp little fists. Hate you, hate you . Thought: Yeah me too, love, me too.
    Brighton Beach like a carnival. Fried sugar and vinegar smells floating from food vans down to the shore, thickening the salt air. Little kids belting around barefoot, spraying up the powdery sand, belonging to no-one, it seems. Huddle of Scots or fake-Scots all arms-thrown-round-shoulders and Auld Lang Syne ,