By Shaun Perry
‘So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back
ceaselessly into the past.’
I reread it a few times, put the book down, rolled a cigarette
and listened to the warm summer breeze.
It was somewhere around midday and I lazed on the deck of
an old friend’s family home. Tall Red Ash circled the property
and green ferns grew around the trunks. The house
was an old weatherboard, asymmetrical and two-story. It was
painted in a cream-white and stoic in appearance. The roof was
steeply pitched with overhanging eaves that left a harsh shade
over the deck.
There was an air of monotony, of vacant reverie and somewhere
I could hear birds laughing at me. Complacent with their
feathered wings, free to fly, free to escape.
I finished my cigarette as Charlie came out bearing two
coffees, a garbage bag and a modest smile. He had a pithy
chin, and wore specks that magnified his black-pebbled eyes;
it gave the impression that he was a madman, and mostly, that
was true.
‘I finished Gatsby,’ I said.
He looked at me with a sudden fervour, ‘Oh yeah, what did you
think?’
‘I’m not sure, I’m still sort of deciding.’
‘Did you get what Fitzgerald was going for?’
I nodded diffidently, ‘Sort of, essentially about the
relationship between the past and how people think in the
present, right?’
Charlie sipped on his coffee and nodded, ‘Yeah, you’re on the
right track. I guess, the American Dream, although usually
considered as hopeful, optimistic, and –’
‘You’ve… ah… got a bit of red on your glasses.’
He paused for a moment, and then wiped it with his sleeve.
‘–um… yeah, so… usually considered as optimistic and
individualistic, it has a consequence of these traits, and an
underlying cognitive dissonance, aggressive exploitation, and
alienation from the present,’ he began to fidget with his
wedding ring.
‘Ol’ Fitzgerald attempts to show that people are unable to
form real human connections with one another, and instead use
each other for their own fleeting satisfaction.’
I nodded in agreement, and attempted to hide my complete
misunderstanding.
I was a damned fool sometimes, ignorant of the most basic
concepts.
We talked ‘Gatsby’ some more. Smoked a few more cigarettes.
Finished our coffees and for a while admired the scenery in
silence.
‘Better get to it,’ Charlie eventually said, and we threw the
coffee cups, cigarette butts and anything else we’d touched
into the garbage bag.
We put our gloves on and I picked up my baseball bat. Charlie
entered the house and I stood before an imaginary pitcher,
belted a home run over the fence and then followed behind him.
My old friend was slumped on the living room floor, half
naked, with a vacant expression and blood leaking from his
temple. We’d scrupulously placed a plastic sheet underneath
him to prevent bloodstains. He was bald with stray grey wires
shooting from the sides and a long hooked nose that was
blunted at the tip. He was plump and had big broad shoulders,
a bulbous gut and beefy thighs.
Charlie sighed and began to roll him up in the plastic and I
looked for spillages.
‘Are you sure ‘Gatsby’ is about the American Dream?’ I
suddenly said.
‘I wouldn’t say it’s solely about the American Dream… more the
consequences of it.’
‘Oh yeah.’
‘So, the people of West Egg for example were inhabited by a
restless ideology, you know, one which sort of forever strives
for a better and more fulfilling future…’ He suddenly stopped,
as he struggled to roll the swollen body. He heaved and heaved
and then finally the body began to turn.
‘… and these seemingly positive forces kind of permeate a
restlessness and greed. The characters, no matter the wealth,
the present is always an escapable void, a sacrifice for the
future…’ he sighed and adjusted his glasses.
‘You know, they’re always chasing whatever’s over the
horizon.’
I told him I understood and then stepped over my old friend on
the way to the mantle-piece. There was a small blue wind-up
music box set beside a row of family photos.
I picked it up; It was heavier than expected and when I
unclipped the lid, there was a little ballerina inside.
‘What are you doing?’ Charlie asked.
‘I’m wearing gloves.’
I wound it up.
‘Greensleeves’ began to play and the Ballerina danced, around
and around and around.
‘Do you think she ever gets tired of dancing to the same song,
over and over?’
Charlie sent me an insolent look, ‘I don’t know. Put it in the
garbage bag though.’
I put it in the garbage bag.
We laid my old friend in the boot and got on our way to the
Redwood Pine forest, an hour or so drive South-East of
Melbourne.
‘Petrol light is on,’ Charlie said.
I watched it as it kept fading on and off, fading on and off
before settling on red for a little while.
‘I know… I like to live life on the edge.’
Charlie suddenly laughed, ‘The edge… you damned fool, how does
Hunter S. Thompson put it. “There is no honest way to explain
it because the only people who really know where it is are the
ones who have gone over”.’
‘Yep, they’ve run out of petrol.’
There was a sudden loud thump, ‘What was that?’ Charlie said.
‘I don’t know, must have been something on the road.’
‘It’ll be fine…what ever it was, it’s gone now,’ I said.
We drove in silence for a while. Charlie lit a
cigarette and started to discharge a fervent loathing for his
wife. Everyday it was the same. With an ashy mouth, a drawled
tone and pensive eyes, he told me how lucky I was. Poor
Charlie got married too young. His wife put on forty kilos’
and popped out twins and he was chained like a dog with a
plastic smile.
‘She’s a damned philistine!’ He said.
‘Philistine?’
‘Someone who doesn’t like to read, or watch decent movies or
anything interesting… she’s a Tigers supporter.”
We got to the Redwood Pine Forest around 2pm.
Charlie started digging the hole and I sat idly by, leaning my back lazily against a tree.
The Redwood Pine Forest was vast, the trees spearing high into
the pale sky like sharpened black blades. Row after row – they
were aligned eerily close to perfection. Half a metre a part
for kilometres.
I drew the blue music-box from the garbage bag, unclipped the
lid and began to wind it up. Around and around she went –
dancing, and I listened while I watched Charlie heave the
‘I think I liked ‘This Side of Paradise’ better,’ I said.
I could see Charlie’s mind ticking over, the pendulum swaying
back and forth as he drove the shovel deep into the soil.
‘I don’t know about that one. ‘This Side of Paradise’ was good…
but ‘Great Gatsby’ was Fitzgerald’s masterpiece’.
‘Nah… when ‘This Side of Paradise’ was released it was hailed
as the definitive novel of the era. When ‘The Great Gatsby’
was released it received mixed reviews and sold very few
books.’
Charlie paused for a moment, ‘Really?’
‘Yeah, it wasn’t until Fitzgerald died and U.S military
distributed a bunch to service members that it got noticed.’
‘Huh… that’s weird. I don’t know, I read ‘This Side of
Paradise’ and it was occasionally beautiful but it was vastly
uncontrolled.’
Charlie, suddenly pleased with his opinion, smiled and then
continued on digging and I continued on winding the music-box.
After a few tedious hours, a few wasted cigarettes and a lot
of ‘Greensleeves’, the hole was deep enough. Charlie threw the
shovel down and looked over at me with a jaded smile. ‘Get our
old friend from the boot would you?’
I opened the boot with a languid sigh and the American dream
flowing wistfully through my mind; that was when I found
myself staring down the cold barrel of a Glock.
The man was red eyed, half-beaten, half-crazed and with a
lucky six like a golden crown.
He squeezed the trigger, and I hit the ground.
My vision was shrouded in a cloud of dust, and my ears were
muted to just a single hollow drone.
I pulled my eyes to the forest and watched as a pink bulbous
figure disappeared into the black of the trees. Our old friend
was somehow alive, and running freely with a gun – as mad as
ever.
I needed to warn Charlie, but I had a damned hole in my neck
‘What are you doing?’ Charlie suddenly screamed, his voice
shrill and broken.
‘I’ve been shot… he shot me! I’m going to die!’
‘How’d he escape?’
‘How the hell did he get a gun! I’m going to die!’
Charlie looked at my neck with an impetuous whip of the eyes,
‘It’s just a flesh wound… get up!’
I got up.
‘Put pressure on it…’ he snatched my hand and planted it on my
neck.
‘Are you sure,’ I said, ‘there’s a lot blood…’
‘Which way did he go?’ he said. I looked around…
my mind, like a shrouded harlequin with marring fragments.
I pointed toward the trees, ‘That way.’
Charlie lobbed my baseball bat, I dropped it, and then slowly
picked it up.
‘We’ll find him.’ Charlie said.
I nodded wearily, and with one hand bound firmly around the
baseball bat, and the other fixed against my neck… we entered
the game.
It wasn’t long until we split up – Charlie didn’t seem to
enjoy my whining; it was just a scrape he kept telling me.
We’d been wandering the forest for hours, just passing tree
after tree – each one identical, each one just another
spear into the sky.
I dropped my bat resignedly, I was feeling strange, there was
an overwhelming sense of surrealism, a floating and wafting of
time. I stood by a puddle like a bent nail and gazed at
the sticky grey ripples. I mused about nothing. Sometimes, I
was in rapture when I was in nothing… and then I started to
wonder about my old friend.
Two decades ago he brought me into this business. He was a
reserved character who went out of his way to evade any kind
of banter. Though he dressed in an eccentric style: flamboyant
Hawaiian shirts, pinks, oranges, yellows and tight fitted
chinos.
He was there the day I started. Back when I was just some
slicked-back greaser with a rolled up crew neck, high-waisted
slacks and the fire of post-adolescence in my eyes.
He saw the horror in my eyes. He was good at reading people,
I’ll give him that.
He put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘Your hands shake the
first time round boy… and after that you’ll miss it.’
He was on to something, and after 20 years there was a strange
monotony to what was once obscure. No matter what you do… no
matter what circumstance, how wild or off kilter – with
routine and repetition, it will stagnate.
It was drugs that got him in the end, and something about
debt.
Eventually, Charlie put his hand on my shoulder and said
dejectedly ‘Lets go home.’
I nodded and wiped the dried blood from my neck, ‘Let’s go to
the hospital.’
He laughed, and we made our way to the car.
‘Surely, the forest will get him.’
‘Otherwise, we’re dead.’
It seemed to take us a while to figure out our old friend had
taken the car.
We were wandering around the entrance, back and forth, arguing
and smoking cigarettes.
It wasn’t until I pointed out the skid marks in the dried dirt
that we realised.
It was my fault of course, and as we hiked up the road in
search of a bus, Charlie let me know.
‘How’d you let him get a gun?’
‘Why didn’t you check if he was dead?’
‘Are you mentally handicapped?’
‘God, you don’t even understand ‘Gatsby’ do you?’
And that was when I noticed the car in the distance. It was
parked on the side of the road, on the crest of a hill with
its hazards lights blinking.
‘That’s what happens when you go over the edge.’ I said.
By the time we’d got to the car, our old friend was gone and
the petrol light was still fading on and off.
I drew my eyes away from the car and set them toward the sun,
sinking with bold defiance. I watched as a pink bulbous figure
ran toward the horizon. What a horizon it was too, the sky was
red and boiled with wisps of pink, orange and yellow.
‘Fitzgerald, you bastard.’ I said, and Charlie looked over,
slack-jawed and bewildered. A rounded silhouette disappearing
long into the distance.
‘What?’ he said.
‘Let’s get him.’
Image by Dustin Lee