Making Laws for Clouds (3 page)

Wayne frowns. He's not there yet.

‘Okay, paint me a picture, Wayne. That's what
they say sometimes. Paint me a picture. You're a shepherd, you're on the job. Now, what can you see?'

‘Okay,' he says, staring across the road and hopefully visualising the Holy Land. ‘There's a swamp. And bombs.'

‘Wayne, it's a rocky hillside outside Bethlehem. Acting is about making stuff up, getting beyond your own little world. You've seen that TV ad about thinking outside the square? That's what it's about. You know what that means?'

‘No.'

That's when the bus turns up. At some stops Joe Bell gives a couple of toots of the horn, but not ours since I always make sure we're ready early. There are only a few people on it tonight, because it's just for cast and crew. Cast and crew and Mrs Bell, on account of the catering.

I try not to stare at Tanika on the way to the bus. Tanika in the front row with her gingery Magus beard, trying – if I'm getting it right – not to stare at me. Or maybe it's just that her beard's not on straight.

‘I've never seen a bomb,' Wayne says when we're getting on. ‘So I made that bit up. I just know they're out there.'

‘That's good Wayne. That's the way'

Old dresses and sandals are pretty much the go for most of the people on the bus but my dress'd be the
biggest, since I've got the biggest mother. It's bunching up when I go up the steps, and I have to lift it like a queen going over a puddle. Very elegant. Mum gave Wayne a bathrobe for his costume, and he got to cut the bottom off but he still catches a sandal on it and headbutts me in the back.

‘What is it with you shepherds and your bathrobes?' That's what I say to him, to stop us both looking too stupid, and Tanika laughs. It's the first time I've heard her laugh into her beard, and I quite like it.

‘Hey,' she says when I sit down.

‘Hey back. Bearded lady'.

‘Nice dress.'

‘Thanks. Don't know about the hibiscus pattern, but maybe I'm just that kind of Magus.'

‘Cool,' she says, and laughs again. Her beard is stuffing from an old mattress stuck on a piece of cardboard and attached by fat ginger sideburns to sunglasses that've had the lenses knocked out. Not a bad job at all.

So I say, ‘Nice burns,' and I'm tempted to give them a tug but I don't since her mother's there (even though she is facing forward). ‘You're very resourceful.'

‘My mum made it.'

‘Yeah, well, she's pretty resourceful too.'

‘I've got my frankincense,' she says, and holds up
some incense sticks. ‘They're musk flavour.' I show her my myrrh jar and I open it so that she can see the goo inside and she says, ‘Oh, yuk, what's the baby Jesus going to do with that?'

We all laugh – except her mother – and I tell her, ‘Grease axles or something. He could do worse than get himself a trade, you know.'

The bus gets to the Blessed Virgin all too quickly, and we have to get down to business. Wayne goes off with the other shepherds and I go with Tanika to find Mattie Hartley. This is a Father Steele strategy – get together in your groups first and talk through some of the issues.

Mattie's down the back, drinking a cup of cordial and eating as many biscuits as he can fit in before we have to get started. He's found a packet somewhere. No surprise.

Clearly it's up to me to take the initiative and I'd rather do that than watch Mattie Hartley crack biscuits open and lick the cream out (and then sometimes stick them together again and put them back in the packet), so I kick our Magus meeting off by saying, ‘Okay, what have we found out since last week? I've found out that myrrh is a resin, and it comes from trees. I reckon I'd have been the kind of Magus who would have been wise enough to have a few myrrh trees in the yard at home.'

Tanika goes next. ‘Okay, mine's frankincense, right? So I looked it up in a dictionary and it said it was old French for . . .' she checks a note she's written on her hand ‘. . . luxurious incense. So I thought musk.'

‘And the wise part of it?'

She gives it some thought, a lot of thought, and then says, ‘I bought it when musk was cheap. And now it's not.'

‘Good one. Mattie?'

‘Well, I've got the gold, so I reckon I'd be the richest Magus. And that's what my dad reckons too. Also the smartest, since I've got the gold.'

Some of us don't actually like Mattie Hartley. We decided that a while back.

‘The other thing I found out,' Tanika says later when Mattie Hartley's getting his beard fluff re-glued, ‘is that the star in the east – the one we follow to get to the baby Jesus – that was probably Venus. That's the planet of love, technically.' Then she goes bright red and looks the other way and says, ‘I'm off for a loo break before we go on.'

Steelo rounds us up as soon as she's back. We, the Magi, have two scenes and our first one's early on.

Herod's Palace, Jerusalem.

Mattie Hartley: ‘Where is he that is born King of the Jews?'

Tanika Bell: ‘For we have seen his star in the east.'

Me: ‘And are come to worship him.'

Herod: ‘Why, I have it he is born in Bethlehem of Judea. Go and search diligently for the young child and, when ye have found him, bring me word again, that I may come and worship him also.'

Herod turns and swishes his gold cape at that point, then he stops and looks at Father Steele. ‘How about an evil laugh? How would that go then?'

‘You probably don't need it,' Steelo says. ‘And you probably don't need the turn either. Not that it's a bad move, but you are the king. You're already in the position of power, remember.'

‘Righto. Got it. Puff up the chest a bit?'

‘Why not? Good. Now, let's keep moving. Let's have Matthew turn and do the next Magus One line, and then the Magi can depart.'

Mattie Hartley: ‘Behold, our star, our guiding light. Off in the east. Bring frankincense and myrrh, and I shall bring him gold.'

Steelo nods. ‘Good. And if we could have you all looking in the same place to behold the star . . . How high do you think it'd be in the sky? Matthew? Kane?'

‘Low. You can't see it at our place at all. We're in a bit of a dip.'

‘All right. Thanks Kane. Low. Good.'

That's us done for the moment, so Steelo moves on to the next scene. Back in the stable. We walk
through the shepherds backstage and I check that Wayne's okay before going outside.

He nods but he doesn't look happy about me asking in front of people. He glares at me like he wants me to go away. I notice the blood from the picked scab has trickled down to his ankle.

I ask him if he's got a tissue and he says, ‘I'm a shepherd on a rocky hillside outside Bethlehem.' He really, really wants me to go away.

So I just tell him, ‘Good work, Wayne,' in a mate-to-mate kind of way, and I leave it at that.

Mrs Bell has the cordial and biscuits out on the table. The cordial's in cups already, so Tanika and I take one each and walk away from everyone else, including Magus One Mattie Hartley.

That's better,' she says. ‘Better with just a couple of Magi, hey?'

‘Yeah. What's his story? It's just cause he's got gold. And a couple more lines than the rest of us.'

‘Yeah. I never liked him anyway, but. Is that bad, not liking him anyway?'

‘No, it's fine. I never liked him and I've known him for years.'

‘I want to be Mary,' she says. ‘I wanted to be Mary, but they wouldn't even let me try out for it.'

‘That's the way it goes here.'

The last church dad worked at, they reckoned I'd
have a fair shot at being Mary this year. And the Mary we've got here is such a bitch to me. I don't know why. I hope she's not a friend of yours if I'm calling her a bitch.'

‘No way. And it's her problem, babe. All her problem. You'd be such a good Mary and she knows it, I reckon.'

‘I hate all this moving. You've got to keep starting again. And people don't like you and there's all that business about who sits where on the bus.'

‘Yeah. That's all sorted out fine now though. Your dad's entitled to some conversation. Everyone's okay with that. So the bus is fine and hopefully you're all settled in and it's feeling a bit more like home here. Everyone's got to have their own space, and you get your space and then you keep it. That's how it should be. You should be here for a while, shouldn't you?'

‘Hopefully.'

‘Yeah. I mean, there's your job at Bob Kotter Realty. And stuff. You're not just some kid who can be picked up and carted around any more. You've got some responsibilities now.'

‘Well, not really. But thanks. I hadn't thought of it that way.'

Then the break's over. We're backstage again, waiting for our next scene. I've never seen the girl who's playing Mary being a bitch, to Tanika or anyone. Maybe there are women's issues going on. The
roughness of the beard makes Tanika's skin look particularly smooth. That's what I'm noticing when she shuts her mouth again and looks at the floor.

Steelo claps his hands and says, ‘Tableau,' which is the signal for the nativity people to freeze as we come to the edge of the stage to do ‘voices off'.

Mattie Hartley: This looks like the place, though all the rooms are given up to others.'

Tanika: ‘Not all the rooms.'

Me: ‘There are stables too, and people staying there, the inn keeper says.'

Knock knock knock. Tableau comes alive, shepherd opens door, the Magi are welcomed.

‘Exceeding great joy,' Steelo says. ‘Let's see exceeding great joy. This is Jesus, remember. You've just walked into a stable and found Jesus.'

Mattie Hartley: ‘We have followed the star and it has brought us here.'

Tanika: ‘To you, Christ Child and Blessed Virgin Mother.'

Me: ‘We come bringing treasures, Lord.'

Mattie: ‘Of gold.'

Tanika: ‘Of frankincense.'

Me: ‘Of myrrh.'

Steelo claps his hands. ‘What's that myrrh, Kane?'

‘We had it at home, Father. I think you get oil off your hands with it.'

‘We might have to look at that.'

‘But I've looked up myrrh, and I think this is about the right consistency. It's green too. Green wouldn't be bad for myrrh.'

‘All right. Maybe a new jar though. I'm sure someone round here would have a spare coil pot, or something like that that'd be just right for a myrrh jar. Leave it to me. Move on, depart, tableau for the nativity people, Magi out the door and Magus One . . .'

Mattie: ‘But, lo, I had it in a dream that we should not return to Herod and should make our journey home another way.'

Exit.

I'm a bit annoyed with Father about the myrrh, to be honest. If he was going to chew me out about the myrrh jar he could have done it later, in private.

The bus takes us home via the Christmas displays at Bokarina, but I'm over the whole nativity thing right at the moment. Dune Vista Drive is already full of cars and minibuses, and some of the houses in the side streets have amazing numbers of Santas and lights and shit but a guy I don't know says, ‘If you're such a wise man, what's going to win the fourth at Eagle Farm on Saturday?' and I'm just not in the mood.

‘Venus is pretty low down sometimes,' Tanika
says when she comes up beside me. ‘You were right with that. And how can anyone say exactly what kind of jar myrrh would've come in back then?'

‘Yeah?'

‘All you've got to do is take the Vegemite label off before the first performance, and you were going to do that anyway. I bet you were.'

‘For sure.'

That's when she holds my hand and says, ‘There we go.'

Tanika Bell is holding my hand in this night not long before Christmas in the best summer of my life. I should get over the jar. People around us get excited and I wonder if they noticed Tanika's move. Then I hear hooves.

We turn around and Mary comes past us on a donkey – an actual donkey – led by Joseph. She sees us and smiles at both of us, but it's like a smile in an old painting – a smart-arse smile half held back, like the Mona Lisa.

Tanika looks at the ground and says, ‘Fuck,' down into her beard as everyone else says, ‘Ooh, Mary.'

We go back to the bus, just the two of us, and we're still holding hands. I almost say something about the Mona Lisa and that Mary's up-herself smile, but I don't. We look around for Venus, but maybe we're in a bit of a dip here too or maybe it's behind a house.

She takes her father's lighter and she lights an incense stick and says, ‘You can see it from my place. We're up on Battery Hill. You could come over and see it from my place some time, if you wanted.' She waves the musky smell around.

‘I thought that stuff was expensive.'

‘But I'm wise. I own it all, so I can do whatever I want with it. Whatever I want.'

‘Yeah?'

I kiss her then. I move to kiss her on the mouth, slowly, but when I get there she pulls away.

‘What's wrong? I thought . . .'

‘My mouth.' She looks away from me again. ‘I hate my teeth. And my nose is bent on the inside. It's okay from the outside, but the bit in the middle is bent so I mainly breathe through my mouth. So that's a problem. And if I kissed you and you didn't like it . . .'

‘It was only the beard that had me wondering. I'd be fine about kissing that mouth.'

And I do, and this time she kisses me back.

I don't sleep till well after midnight. I'm nude in the hammock and tonight there's a breeze coming through the slats, bringing in wet salty swampy smells. I can remember every second of how Tanika's rough teeth felt on my tongue. And my neck, and my
ear. And the taste of blood in my mouth that time when she gave my tongue a bit of a gouge without meaning to. She'd be quite an eater, I'd reckon.