Max (15 page)

‘Let's pull in here, Max, over there,' Meg called. ‘I need a rest and a bite to eat. I brought us some cookies.'

Max looked across at the other side of the river. A densely wooded hill ran steeply down to the water. Small rivulets bounced and gurgled their way down the slopes, whip birds cracked in the box gums while swallows flitted in and out of the small wattles that grew near the edge.

He munched on a cookie and wondered about Mai. Where was she? What was she doing? Had any other guys tried their luck? More importantly, had she discouraged them?

‘I haven't been in a canoe or a kayak since the Falls. Pretty mad thing to do, eh, Mum?'

‘Oh yes, pretty mad,' Meg took a swig from her water bottle, rol ed up her trousers and paddled in the water. ‘If you want to know the truth, Max, it's right off the bloody wall – then again, nearly everybody I know has done crazy things, weird things. Usually because they've got pain in their hearts. Like you. Let's face it – at any one time you could make a list of all your woes in life and convince yourself that nothing will ever be any good or right again.'

‘Like Lou?'

‘Just like Lou. And like Bob too. And probably like a lot of people you know. The thing is, Max – and I know you'll probably think this is your mother raving on – in times of real strife we all need a safety net. We can't be left to just float around. We need some love.'

An azure blue kingfisher hopped among the tangled maze of roots in the chocolate-brown mud.

‘So what did you and Lou have in common?' his mother asked, hands thrust in her pockets, standing calf-deep in the water.

‘Not a lot. Graffiti, mostly. He hated the bush. Could never convince him to come paddling. He hated swimming too but he was a great artist. If you come down to the city I'll show you some of his pieces. Y'know, dad never liked me doing it much. But he liked Lou alright.'

‘Dave can't talk. When the Vietnam War was on he was known as the paint-up specialist. Every week he'd go out painting up anti-war slogans, “Free such and such”, “US out”. Matter of fact he took you one night. I was out and he was supposed to be looking after you. I nearly killed him.'

‘You're having me on?'

‘No – it's true.' Meg shielded her eyes against the sun.

‘He was rather good at it, though.' She smiled wistfully at Max and reached down into the water, picked up a rosy pink stone and held it in the palm of her hand.

‘Remember that bloke dancing around Shelley last night – she was the one throwing her clothes into the sea. His name's Sam. He runs the local fruit and vegie shop. He reckons if you want to paint something, he'd be happy to supply the paint. He's got an empty wall.'

‘What's he want – advertisements?'

‘Hardly. A painting. Something interesting – whatever you want. That's if you don't mind doing it legally?'

‘Really?'

‘Yes, really. And that girl you were watching last night – she works there part-time.'

‘What girl, Mum?'

‘Give me a break. Who are you kidding? The one that made your eyes hang out of their sockets. In any case, she's too old for you and you've already got a girl back in the city. What's her name – Mai?'

Max felt a hot flush and grinned foolishly.

‘Oh well, there's no harm in looking, is there, Mum?'

‘Not usually. Anyway, she's gone back to the city for a few days to see her boyfriend.'

Meg laughed at her son's discomfort. She tossed the stone into the deeper reaches of the river, which sent out perfectly measured ripples to the bank and beyond. A crow's call wailed in the bush like a lost child. Max lifted his head.

‘About time,' he thought.

I
T WAS THE MIDDLE OF THE WEEK. A wind scurried up the main street of the township. A retired couple wandered along in front of the shops, their arms linked together, commenting on prices as they checked their shopping list.

They stopped for a moment, the only audience for Max's work as he stood on a plank of wood resting between two ladders, spraying paint over the wall at the front of Sam's fruit shop.

Inside the shop lay small mountains of dark oranges, bunches of parsley and coriander, unwashed red potatoes, stalks of celery. Yellow butternut pumpkins were stacked like wood next to buckets of garlic, ginger and lemongrass. He thought of Mai – Mai of the long black hair, as sweet as the sandalwood incense that wafted from the shop.

Don't these people ever stop burning incense? Max wondered. I think Woody's going to like this town. Nothing he said or did would seem weird to these people.

That morning they had received a letter from Woody and Dave. Dave had gone on with a lot of worried nothings and Woody talked about his new batch of jam. ‘Naomi must be back on the scene,' Max said to his mother and then felt immediately disloyal. Bye, bye, Despina, he thought to himself.

Woody finished the letter by asking, ‘Max, how do you think the old guy, your friend, knew you were in trouble? Do you think it was accidental? He was a long way from his island. I was just wondering, sorry. We hope you are both happy. Dave sends his love.'

His attempt at a signature was to show the world that he was becoming older. He ended with a PS. ‘I'll bring some jam for you, Mum.'

At least he didn't call her Meg. Max frowned, then caught himself and smiled.

Before him were swathes of purple spray. He had thought all his birthdays had come at once when Sam had given him one hundred dollars to buy the paint.

Good is what you're going to get, Max said to himself, returning with a couple of shopping bags that rattled with cans of spray paint.

He worked rapidly, moving back and forth along the plank, only stopping long enough to shake his cans. Thin fine jets of black and purple spray swamped the blankness of the wall. Showers of paint buried the greyness. Finely crafted yellow letters, golden in the weak autumn sun. The words fluttered from his heart and this time he knew them in his mind. This time they came from him, wild and willing and were part of him, neither alien nor enemy.

The scene on the railway bridge seemed so long ago, like it had happened in a dream. Lou had killed himself, stepped off a bridge with a rope around his neck. Whichever way Max looked at it, the story didn't make much sense and certainly had no happy ending. It was especially sad for Lou but did Lou have a good enough reason to set such an example. Did he? He judged the future by what he had in the present. Maybe he thought he was a no-hoper. No hope in the present, no hope for the future. If only he'd stuck around – his story might've changed. Maybe staying alive was reason enough to be alive, meaning enough for Max, for all of us. Anyway, if there were no Max, who would tell their story?

At two o'clock he was finished. He jumped down from his platform. A crow, standing on the edge of a cascading rubbish bin, pecked hungrily at a half-eaten chiko roll.

Max's work lay damp and glistening. Sam emerged from his fruit shop and stood next to him, taking it all in.

On the left of the painting a crow, black as sump oil, stood haughtily, tough and bold, its eyes black as night. Against a massive backdrop of royal purple – the best, Lou, the best – Crowman stood, his thick strong beak half-open. And from his mouth poured words that people would wonder about for years. A line of cursive golden script coiled down the wall:

He likes to glide but he knows sometimes
he has to flap
Crows?
They know things

At Crowman's feet limped a smaller crow, swathed in bandages, and in the corner of the piece stood Max's tag, the Da Vinci man.

Sam shook Max's hand and thanked him, then walked back into his shop, grinning like a mullet as he returned to his boxes of potatoes and overburdened shelves. Max wandered off in the direction of his mother's home, leaving the old couple on the footpath in front of a painting, reading words that echoed down the street, across grassy banks and out onto the swollen inlet.

I
N THE MID-AFTERNOON of the next day, settled in a single sea kayak, Max waved goodbye to Meg who was standing up to her shins in salty water, sea-grass stroking her feet. The craft had beautiful momentum, though Max still had little idea of how to quickly or effectively change its course.

Small flat islands, covered in sand and saltbush and lush green grass, spread out across this side of the inlet. They were a home for a myriad of water birds, herons, swamp hens, pelicans and pacific gulls. A salty wind bit at his eyes and the skin on his face. Pushing the sea kayak into top gear, Max left the islands behind, like posies floating in the wake of a ship. His muscles began to feel well-oiled again, his body thriving on its own movement and sense of purpose. Oh, to feel as though some peace was just within his reach. It was enough to make him sing and laugh and cry. Just like he had in bed last night after talking to Mai on the phone, listening to her voice, tasting her lips, remembering a mound of autumn leaves and a kiss that seemed so far away.

The sky was dull and grey, seemingly lifeless. Max kept a watchful eye on the wind and sky. If the weather turned dirty he would have to allow a few minutes to rein in his kayak. He had no intention of dying, no intention of flirting with suicide. No matter what he had done in his recent past, no matter what the reasons, this time he was paddling for the sheer joy of it.

He headed for Lawson Sands, named after the great Australian storyteller who many years ago camped, wrote and got drunk at Brown's Beach. The sands lay only centimetres below the water's surface at high tide but were exposed for some hundreds of metres when the water ran out to the sea. In summer months when the water level was always low, red jellyfish swam in the warmer waters and fairy terns hatched their eggs on the sands.

A pelican and its mate flew overhead, heading towards land, chests puffed out like self-important matrons. A salty tang whipped his face and tousled his hair, while curds of foam circled on green velvet water.

Max looked at the horizon and saw dark clouds building. At the same time he realised that the water had changed – it was almost unfriendly. The surprising quickness of the change made him falter in his rhythm. He was halfway between dry land and Lawson Sands. Black, brooding clouds straddled the mountain ranges to the north. Seagulls screeched and wheeled, fighting their way back to shore. Max breathed in the air and smelt rain on the wind.

Turn or go back? Turn or go back? The kayak kept on course like there was a magnet in those northern ranges. And then he saw it. Bolts of blue lightning, violent zigzags bouncing and ricocheting off the peaks, lighting up the sky. It was the kind of picture that made sailors take off their caps and fall to their knees.

The water began to rise as the wind blew harder. The chop turned into small waves with no rhyme or reason. A swift-moving current pushed the kayak sideways as rain, cold as ice, began to pelt down.

Paddling against the flow was difficult. Max's heart was thumping and his breath was reduced to short gasps. If he could turn the kayak more in the direction of the current, perhaps he could trust to luck and go with it. Maybe it would run into a headland, a beach, or dryland.