Nathan Hobby’s blog

 They left for Perth into a long winter twilight.  He was excited and he showed them his licence.

            Solous said: ‘They’ll deport you.’

            Brendan said: ‘Why do you want to leave?’

            Michael hesitated, the stock answers   so sick that i argue smirking as if it is good and amusing to disagree about this

            ‘I don’t…’ want to end up like mum, ‘like the fur.’   our stupid stupid fictions we always cloak whatever’s closest to us why oh why why can’t i say because she

            Solous said, ‘You know we’re not even going to get to Melbourne, don’t you?  I mean, no offence, but you’re our spiker and I mean, look at you.  The guys from up north – they’re like two metres tall.  We haven’t got a chance of getting to the nationals.’         

            ‘I think we might.’

            Solous smiled at him condescendingly and they were about to descend into another pointless argument so Michael turned around in his seat and faced the front.  He suddenly hated them with a bright worm of anger that wriggled through his body.  The bus pushed on.  He looked through it for an empty seat.  The only one left was right at the front, the worst furred in the whole bus.   

            He went up and sat on it, the thick strands of fur itchy and slimy on his bare legs.   His head vibrating against the window he stared into the winterdark.  In front of him was the concentration of the bus driver  he is a living statue a constant to live by what an achievement to be alive yet unchanging rebecca will understand

            Through the window was an abandoned service station.  He glimpsed a black bird flying out of the cracked yellow plastic of the Shell sign, the rusted skeleton of a truck held still in thick fur and grass and the fogged window of the shop, the suggestion of untouched treasure inside: rows of bright chocolates and drinks, miraculously preserved from before.   And for a minute after the snared images darted before his eyes, an overlay on his thoughts.

            rebecca at gallipoli we are crashing through the nullarbor fence and beyond is freedom   The dream was made of words and it faded, abstracted and distant.    tomorrow i see her twelve four sixteen hours… mere friend in the most terrible limiting sense as the very boundary of possibility she is a friend and she has a boyfriend and where oh where is Ruby?

            delice icecold her body hums slender her angles the sharpness of her face her hair is whitegold her hand is moist under the net when one time only i shook it and say to her well played delice   and i do not know her   come around ruby/ i could never sleep alone i shook her hand once once i shook her hand and only once

            He saw the sun setting over a hellish black field filled with plumes of fur that stretched as far as he could see.   Ruby i will never have   Massive black random branches of it some dripping with slime, some spiralling, some spiking, some reaching.   my faint reflection over the field how ugly i am and girls hate me that is a house through the plumes a poor old man lives in that house in the shadow of the fur through the field girls hate me and one day itll be me ill live there and watch the fur growing closer and closer death dramatised in quite a striking analogy

            The bus’s headlights were faint into the black.  The rain set in and the lights of the Compound were eventually visible – a few lights dotting the horizon, and that was the city.

*

            The bus arrived near midnight and he saw in the tired the motel in the headlights.   An impression of fur mottled drab brown brick.   And in the centre of the courtyard, a lemon tree surrounded by a knee high tangle of fur and grass but bearing yellow unfurred lemons.  

            Inside his feet fell ankle deep into fur and he choked on the mustiness of years.   Solous and Brendan took two of the other beds in his room. He fell asleep under furred blankets.

*

             As he walked through the doors into the great faded corridor the Catholic College girls were there and Delice walked.  She was walking, just walking with all that beauty, her sweet mouth closed and her quiet ice eyes just looking.  Her long hair was tied into a tight bun and she was unbearably neat and untouchably delicate.

            Her ugly friend recognised him, smiling, and said, ‘Hi.’

            ‘Hello,’ he replied, wishing he could say hello to Delice his mind milking itself trying to find something to melt Delice’s ice eyes.

            ‘I kind of wish,’ he began already cringing, ‘that we were playing you girls again – you know how hard guys find it to shake other guys’ hands after the game?’   shitshitshit

            But the ice eyes regard him for a second and she snickered – just slightly, it could have even been in contempt – and an ecstasy like flying the millionness of possibility exploded in his heart and his mind and his guts.  Delice. 

            ‘We’ve got a game on court one,’ her friend said, ‘so see you later.’

            ‘Good luck,’ he replied, his mouth curling into a stupid smile that he could not hold back.   Brendan smiled too, ‘In there, Mike!’ he said to Michael as Rebecca called out his name and he turned abruptly. 

            ‘I’ve been looking for you.’

            She hugged him, his chest briefly squeezed against her breasts.

            ‘I’ve been looking for you.’

            ‘I brought a picture of Paul you’ve got to see.’

            ‘Oh… good.’ She took the photo from her bag.   The two of them sat in an unfurred park in sunshine.  He stared at it for a moment and handed it back.

            ‘Oh..,’ he said.

            ‘I forgot that letter I was going to give you.  Can I bring it tomorrow?  I’ve got to go – our game’s starting.’

            ‘Okay… bye.’

            ‘Gallipoli,’ she mouthed as she walked away.  as if a joke/ lisbon the heroic men charging into the machine guns so hollow, so distant the poor bastards got slaughtered my life built on a sixteen year olds fantasy i should have been ashamed of even then

            But when he go onto the court he stood in clarity knowing what he wanted and how to get there and on the return he leapt instinctively as the ball came to the net and he felt like he was flying as he spiked hard and deep.  The ball quickspun from the receiver’s arms into the ground and looking up to the spectators Michael saw in his myopic vision Delice blurred in the front row watching him and behind him Solous was congratulating him and the world was good and he was happy and he moved through this high as the game clicked into a winning rhythm serve after serve after serve and they won it easily and then the next one and the one after too and escape was near and Ruby was near.  

*

         Back at the motel he found a six pack of beer in the cupboard and with an awful grin on his face as if he were drunk already he called out to them at what he had found.

            ‘We’d better see what Brier thinks about that,’ Brendan said, taking the beers. 

            ‘No!’ Michael said with a child meanness to his voice; he snatched the beers back and put them back in the cupboard and then strode into the bedroom.   Brendan’s insistent voice came behind him. 

            ‘If we get caught we’ll get suspended and we’ll go home – we won’t even compete here, let alone go to Melbourne.  I thought that was what was important to you.  Besides, you’re the one who’s always telling me that drinking’s wrong.’

            ‘Okay.  You do what you want.’ 

            He came back out and sat on the couch and felt the fur creeping in from all directions.   His thigh was itchy and he scratched it and scratched it without relief.  Brendan was laughing with Solous and the others and Michael hated them all and he stared at the useless television sitting in the corner of the room, the screen utterly furred over with a huge grotesque tendril reaching out of it toward him and he thought someone should get rid of that television. 

*

            That night he dreamed he landed at Gallipoli.  It was a sunny day and in the distance he could see a memorial, already erected to him and the other soldiers.   He couldn’t see any enemy; all he had to do was get there.   He ran into the field and it was a field of fur tearing at his legs.   He looked up and Ruby stood on the memorial, waving to him and she looked like Rebecca.  He waved back, and then her face changed and he realised she was Delice.  He looked down and the fur was gone.  He was treading on medals, medals lining the field.  He panicked as they broke under his feet, running faster, but the memorial and Delice didn’t get any closer.

            He woke tense.  It was black five am.   He could hear the others breathing and the hum of the fridge from the kitchen.  He knew he wouldn’t get back to sleep so he got up, making instant coffee in the dark and drinking it on the steps outside.  He made out the shape of the lemon tree in the darkness with sudden disgust.  to bear lemons as if nothing wrong how dare

            He drank cup after cup of coffee and felt the caffeine explode through his bloodstream.  At dawn the world was so vivid it stung clean sharp and he went inside and  the fur glowed luminous black.

*

             caffeine OD the caffeine the coffee oh huge is the arena six million seats crowd in to fall on me to fall and kill and squash and the whole world watches and the ceiling so distant time has stopped but no-one is watching no-one is watching our game the seats are empty absence gigantic time has stopped a million a trillion a crillion an absence an absence in my heart an absence in my soul

              The ball floated over, a dream in someone else’s life and hit the ground just in front of him.   Angry cries and then he was on the bench and they had lost the game.

            Hours to the next game.  It did not matter.  All was lost.   what is the point of life?  what a stupid stupid question only wanky teenagers ask i think in cliches i am cliches always and forever an absence    He didn’t move from the bench; he sat and watched a bone thin girl stride quickly from one end of the arena to the other.  On her neck she had a black patch the size of a palm.  She looked nervously around as she walked.  She came closer and he could see the sprouting strands of fur.  He shivered.  my destiny oh get up michael your mother wishes to speak to you do not go in there

            He walked out into the hall.   All around him people moved and he was so alone.  an absence ma an absence in my heart an absence in my soul

            Then Rebecca appeared.

            ‘Hey,’ she said.

            ‘How are you going?’  Pulled back into convention.

            ‘Not bad,’ she replied, ‘Come and sit in the pavilion.’

            ‘Okay.’   i wish to pity myself do not dare cheer me

            They sat in an empty stand and she said, ‘I’ve got your letter.’   Her legs were swinging.  so smooth so slender so sex

            ‘Thanks.’  give to me your legs as well

            It was thin.  Since Paul, her letters had become much shorter.  do you sleep with him this very body before me naked and full of his dick the only thing separating us time ugly binocularman desecrates her the virgin mary in steaming cathedrals in year one there is no sex the Fall we all must Fall

            ‘I’ve got my licence,’ he suddenly said, remembering what he’d been waiting to tell her.  He handed it to her.  

            ‘Wow,’ she said, after a moment, ‘It’s excellent.  I reckon it’ll work.’

            ‘I need to do it soon,’ he said.  ‘I need to get out of here.  I’m going to get furred.’

            ‘Yeah,’ she said, staring distractedly at the seat next to him.  ‘Me too.  I’m still working on my card.  I’m too much of a perfectionist.’
            Silence. 

            who is she?     by the fire peter says i do not know the girl!  i have never seen the man before in my life!  everything in the world is dead    She sat there with her deep eyes suddenly so false and he did not want to talk to her. 

            ‘I saw Ian yesterday!’ she finally said, as if something good and exciting should be said.  As if all that needed to be said about Gallipoli had been said.

            ‘Yeah?’

            ‘You remember him?  He was the year above us.  Graduated last year.  It was good to talk to him again.  He really cheered me up.  It’s been a while since I’ve seen him.’

            jealousy black and brutal  ‘So seeing me didn’t cheer you up?  Don’t I make a difference?’
            She scowled slightly.  ‘What?’ she shook her head, ‘Don’t stress.  I liked seeing you too – nothing to get upset about.’

            He felt sick.   Holding back the fool… he was ugly, not just out, but in, and she could see it… holding back the fool pretends….  she is all i have and as she slips so surely away from me i am grasping with anything i can

            She looked to her watch.  ‘I’ve got a training run.  Got to go.  See you round!’

            ‘Bye,’ he said as she walked briskly away.   i love you   no i don’t i know that if anything i hate you    you don’t care

            He began to open the letter but then decided he wanted to be away from them all before he read it.  He walked out of the stadium and crossed the six lanes of the deserted highway.   Across the road was bush, a close cluster of green and black.

            Above him the clouds (now seen through a ceiling of branches) were closing in.  The sky was darkening.  Some of the trees had no green, they were skeletons, choked by the fur.  The path led deeper into the cluster of bush.  He came finally to a stagnant lake and he sat by its edge on the damp earth.  He opened the letter.  It was less than a page of her ever neat printing.

            Dearest Michael,

            why does she write that i am not her dearest

            Your letter seemed full of troubles.  I worry about you -  you are so burdened with sensitivity; oh what I am I going to do with you?
            It appears you’re looking for love, or at least someone to care for you.  I  think of you sometimes, in fact only last night I thought of you – how we may have only been drawn together once & I thought that a shame.            

            It sounds like you don’t even know Delice.  Why are you so haunted by her?  Girls will come your way.  You’ve just got to relax and have a bit more confidence.

            Anyway – you’ve got more important things on your mind.  What about Gallipoli?  Shouldn’t that be what you’re thinking about now?

            See ya at the volleyball comp!  (Where we’re both going to win and get to go to the nationals where we will escape)

            Love Rebecca   

            Huge spots of rain were hitting him and the letter.  Heavier, the ink was running.

            remember gallipoli we charged full pelt into bullets blood spurts the pain and dead for what while you stared rebecca so distractedly yeah  me too 

            He put the sodden letter back in his pocket and just sat there in the rain.  He noticed for the first time a turtle’s shell at the lake’s edge.  It looked so fragile, so empty.   He poked at it with his finger.  The underside was ridden with fur. 

            Tears began to roll down his cheeks, lost in the rain.  He was crying for the turtle, he was crying for himself, he was crying because the fur had stuffed up everything in the world.  Or at least his world.  His state.  Why couldn’t it destroy everyone else’s worlds?  Kill other people’s mums?  Why did it have to stop at the state border?

            He thought of that turtle dying right where it still lay at the lake’s edge, in the serenity, in the stink, slowly being covered with fur and he didn’t care about volleyball any longer; he didn’t care about anything.  He lay back on the muddying ground and let the rain soak into him, into his very being.  to wash away to wash away self to be absorbed into the damp rich earth into the fur merging with the turtle forever by the unchanging lake  because there is no ruby and no escape only the turtle by the lake

            His inner thigh was itching again and he wondered what the beginning of fur felt like.  That was it, he decided indifferently – he was furred. 

            Because, he thought, me, my Mum and the turtle have become one.

*

            He got up eventually and walked back to the stadium to face Gallipoli.   There were no guns, just the monotony, the strict repetition of the ball coming over the net, the lines, the rules,  tedious warm ups.   They won one set and lost the other and then time ran out and they were left in the grey.   Perhaps in the finals, perhaps not.  no glorious life or death charge over the hill into the turks but a lingering half life half death

            ‘Sullivan,’ the coach called just as he tried to slink off.  ‘You’re on net duty for the girl’s final.’    He walked over to the other court.  how shoddy it is the final and they use other players to be net umpires 

            He tensed.  On one side of him Rebecca was warming up with the rest of the Collie team; on the other, Delice with the rest of the Catholic College girls.   Rebecca waved at him and he waved back, glancing at Delice.   God did you have something to do with this?  to stand between them as judge

            Catholic College took the first set easily.   In the second, Collie lifted and won narrowly.  He didn’t make a single call.  He tried not to look at Delice or Rebecca.  the smell of dad’s old study in collie the books the field of fur as we came to perth the hills are alive  the old man who lives fades slowly i am the old man of the field of fur and i am fading slowly 

            Collie was  running away with the third set, ten to three up.    Delice looked at him.    she implores   she loves me, of course    The next point, the girl next to Rebecca (Yvette? he’d gone to school with her only last year! so much was fuzzy) looked like she might have narrowly brushed the net with her hand.   He couldn’t tell; another player was blocking his view.   Looking at Delice he blew softly on his whistle, calling a net touch.  The game stopped, Catholic College was given the serve.

            ‘But I didn’t touch the net!’ (Yvette?) screamed at her coach, Mrs Pendal.

            ‘I know,’ he heard Mrs Pendal say, ‘Just keep on playing, you’re easily ahead.’

            Collie crumbled and Catholic College won the set fifteen to thirteen, the game two sets to one.  Delice was hugging her teammates and was oblivious to him, along with all of them.   On the other side of the net, the Collie team sat on the court, some of them crying, Rebecca’s back to him.  He stepped off the net-seat and started over toward her and he needed her to hug him, to tell him that everything was all right. 

            ‘Rebecca,’ he said softly.  She turned and stared at him.  For a moment she looked vulnerable, frightened, her eyes wide.  But then her face hardened and she scowled at him before looking to the ground, toying with her shoelace.   His face quivered and he turned away and started walking.  

            He kept on walking and he forced himself not to turn.   lot’s wife a pillar of salt  lot was righteous lot escaped because he was righteous but i am the destroyer don’t look back don’t look back you are never going to see delice or rebecca again your whole life so don’t don’t look back

            Solous, Solous leering in his vision with a fat smile.  ‘Hey Sullivan,’ he said, a tinge of fake sadness, ‘We missed out on the final!  We missed out, I’m sorry.  We missed out.’

            He kept on walking.

*

            Back at the motel he took the six pack from the cupboard and shut himself out on the dark balcony.   He stared out at the Compound’s lights and then the stars from horizon to horizon and he hated everything he could see and he hated himself.

            Unclipping the first bottle, he struggled with the top, his hands shaking slightly, until it finally came off.   From there it became a methodical experiment as he drank all six in a row, draining the warm bitter beer from each one and then throwing the empty bottle into the black overrun garden below.  By the sixth, the world had blurred and the drinking was a rhythm, pouring the foul tasting liquid down his throat because for some reason that he had forgotten, he had to.

            He stood up, the world slow and dizzy, and went into the loungeroom.  Brendan saw him and laughed.

            ‘Yeah good one Mike!  You think you can fool us?’

            ‘I’m not joking  – I drank all of them.’

            Solous went and checked the cupboard.

            ‘They’re all gone!’ he called.

            Michael smiled, and in his false world the moment felt like a stunning victory.

            ‘You’re going to get caught,’ Brendan said.

            ‘I don’t care.  I don’t care at all.  Because guess what?  We’re not going to Melbourne.  We’re never going to Melbourne.  You were absolutely right Solous, we’re stuck here forever.   A new century is coming Solous.  And to that century and to its people I say “Fuck you.”‘

            He stumbled over to the television and pushed it over.  It shattered dully and furred glass spread over the furred carpet. 

            ‘You’re such an idiot,’ Solous said.

            Michael scowled at him. ‘Shut up!  I hate you!’    He shoved Solous and Solous grabbed his arm with tight digging thumbs.   It made him furious and he swung wildly with his free arm, his fist smashing into Solous’s chin.    

            Solous squealed, clutching at his jaw.  Michael watched as the tears Solous struggled to hold back finally came.   He was tense, waiting for Solous to come at him, get him back, but Solous retreated, sitting on the couch and everyone was staring at Michael. 

            Michael laughed, as if he could make it funny if he wanted to, and he staggered outside.  gallipoli she jokes it was a bitterly cold affront and we charged into the bullets and i shot you and you shot me hahaha

            The lemon tree was illuminated by the outside light. 

            ‘I’m going to kill you,’ he said to it, ‘I am going to kill you.’

            He climbed it, his drunken limbs slipping, scratching.  He thought of his mum, rotting underground, the fur in her still alive, he thought of Melbourne and he went into a frenzy, tearing the furless lemons from the hateful tree and hurling them to the ground.  Solous and Brendan came out to watch.  He chucked some at them but missed and after that they went inside and he was all alone.

            It seemed to go on forever; there were so many lemons.   He was finally sure he’d got them all but it didn’t seem complete.  He took the ID card from his wallet and hurled it down into the long grass with the lemons.   No-one saw.  He came down from the tree and walked silently past everyone’s stares into bed. 

            ruby ruby come around ruby i can’t sleep alone claire and delice dont you realise i would die for you and i will die without you how long oh lord how long the souls of those departed cried     and there was silence in heaven

*

            He woke at five am again with a pounding headache, a sore ankle and a stinging patch on his thigh.  He groped his way into the bathroom, turned on the strobing fluoro light and stripping off his boxer shorts, already fearing the truth.  There was a patch of black the size of a twenty cent piece on his inner thigh. 

            He took the carving knife from the kitchen and attacked it.  Blood spewed out everywhere, streams of it.  He couldn’t get it out – its roots ran too deep.  His leg burned with pain but he was beyond crying.  He left a trail of blood as he went outside.

            He looked at the lemon tree still lit by the yellow spotlight and realised he hadn’t got all the lemons.  It was noticeably barer but about a quarter of them were left in the top of the tree.  It had won after all.

            each pore is a strand of fur i am the amazing furman and i am dirty to the core stained and guilty with not a thing to show.   He felt his mouth quiver as he tried to comprehend: I have fur.  I am furred.  Fur is me.  I am fur. 

            Nothing was left.  He had destroyed Ruby, he had destroyed Gallipoli, he had destroyed his reputation – Briers would find out what he had done and he would be suspended or something – and now the sentence complete: fur.  He was fur.  

            He didn’t want to face the sun.  He didn’t want to face the others, the coach.  He didn’t want to face death.  He wanted everything to be all right.  He wanted to take it all back, he wanted to make it right.   Maybe then the black would disappear from his thigh.  Maybe then Rebecca would not hate him.   

            He scavenged through the long grass, picking out lemons and putting them in the bin.  It was impossible; the bin was soon full and there were still many lemons left.  His blood dribbled down his leg and over the grass.   He felt weak, as if he was about to pass out.   He wished someone would feel sorry for him.   Someone had to.  Somewhere Ruby was watching.  bullshit michael bullshit   The tears came fresh.  He couldn’t find his card and, he decided it didn’t even matter because he was never going to escape anyway.

*

            He is running across the Nullarbor at night.  It is a fragrant night – a cool breeze is blowing, the sky is purple and the moon is full.  The fence appears closer with each second.  He reaches it and finds the gate wide open.  He runs through, into freedom.  Is that it, he thinks, is this all it takes?  Is Gallipoli this painless?

            It takes him several weeks to run to Melbourne.  He passes through green pastures, clean towns, living cities.   He comes to Melbourne and he’s drawn to a house in a suburb lined with oak trees and manicured lawns.  It is large and brand new.  He knocks on the door.  Ruby is waiting for him inside.  She cries out when she sees him.  She’s been waiting for him for years.  She hugs him tight and she smells of wattle, a bright spring day.   He clutches her tight and realises everything’s all right.  There’s none of Rebecca, none of Delice in her; she is Ruby, she is furless and she is his forever.