Barney gives me a thumbs-up. ‘Hey, I got well paid for the painting job I did with Harry.’ He sits next to me on the bed and strokes my face. ‘And, baby, it’s your twenty-eighth birthday.’ He smiles slyly at me. ‘Saturn return. Big cosmic year for you. Your karma is coming home to roost.’
I throw a pillow at him. ‘I don’t believe in that shit.’
He keeps grinning. ‘It doesn’t matter whether you believe in it or not. It happens.’
I jump up and start getting dressed. When we’re both ready we scout the town looking for a seafood restaurant. On the way we stop at a payphone and I ring my parents. Mum wishes me a happy birthday and asks a rapid series of questions, but I’m anxious to talk to Dad. She finally goes to find him. The small screen on the payphone tells me I only have forty cents worth of time.
‘Many happy returns.’ My father sounds gruff and tired on the phone.
‘Dad, Dad,’ I say quickly, ‘Barney and I stayed in Bonegilla last night.’
The old man laughs. ‘What the hell you want to go to that shithole for?’
I’m disappointed in his response. ‘I just wanted to see what it was like.’
He laughs again. ‘Anything there?’
‘Nah. Just a few sheds falling apart and the old administration centre.’
‘They should burn the whole of it down. It was a hateful place.’ We are both silent on the phone. Twenty cents left: the screen is flashing a warning.
‘Wish Barney my best, will you? You know, with his old man and everything.’ The phone goes dead.
That night Barney and I have a huge meal over two bottles of red wine. We talk about Bonegilla, about our fathers, about work and how to get it. We make plans to see the world, and laugh about our favourite episodes of Gilligan’s Island and Number 96. We stumble back to the hotel, Barney singing snatches of mean-spirited punk, as we are silently cruised by a cop car.
In our room I take off Barney’s clothes and he tells me he loves me over and over. I cradle him in my arms as he sits naked on the floor, his clammy skin tasting sour from alcohol. He is crying softly. There is nothing I can say or do to stop the tears.
We are going to Sydney to be with Barney’s father when he dies. I haven’t spent much time with Daniel but he is a remarkable man. For twenty years he has wandered the country, trying to find work as a musician, more often settling for any labouring work he could find. For a long time Barney and his mother followed the stray paths Dan chose to take them along, but eventually Sheila had had enough. Barney and his mother moved to Sydney and Dan continued to crisscross the desert to get to whatever was on the other side. His guitar remained faithful.
Barney doesn’t know where his father picked up the virus and he thinks it is pointless to guess. There were plenty of opportunities. Drugs and sex did not dominate Dan’s life like music did, but he wasn’t averse to experimenting with them. He was as attentive to his son as his life allowed, but he knew that Sheila was a decent mother and probably did better with him not around. Barney can be damning of his old man, moaning about his laziness and his irresponsibility. But Barney detests normalcy too much not to have a grudging respect for the way Dan had chosen to live his life, for the things he had learned and the people he had got to know. Lining our kitchen wall back in Melbourne is a scrappy collage of photos that Barney has made of his father. Dan in Nepal; Dan and Sheila smoking a bong; Dan and an old girlfriend nude at ConFest; Dan playing guitar with a tiny Barney on his knees. And in pride of place, in luminous black and white, Dan beaming with his arm around Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. Los Angeles, 1979.
•
Just before we arrive in Sydney’s outer suburbs, Barney stops the car and asks if I mind driving. We change seats and I drive into the city. It is late morning and the closer to town we get the more the traffic hems us in.
Barney closes his eyes and lets out an infuriated groan. ‘I hate this shithole.’
I don’t. I’m excited to be back in this furious, massive city.
•
Dan opens the door and I can’t hide my shock at how ill he looks. I stumble over my greeting. His hair has fallen out, his face has sunken in and his whole body seems to have shrunk. He sees my confusion and reaches out to hug me. I loop my arm carefully around his frail frame, fearful of hurting him, but I kiss him strongly on the neck. Barney is standing behind me with our bags. I move aside as the two men hold each other tight.
The house is a small terrace in Glebe. It smells of coconut, tobacco and frankincense. Dan ushers us through a blanket hung across a doorway and into the lounge. A glass sliding door separates the kitchen from the lounge room. The rooms feel warm and light. Big bright canvases fill the walls, and the kitchen is all white surfaces broken up by a collection of posters. Even though it is warm early autumn, a small heater is blowing out hot air.
Dan bends down slowly and clumsily turns it off. ‘Sorry, boys, I feel the cold these days.’
Barney reaches down and turns it on again.
•
The first night is a party. Three friends of Dan’s come over, with beer and Turkish takeaway. One of them is a tall man called Stanley. He wears faded clothes, has long thin hair, and proceeds to tell excellent stories about religion and magic. He looks a little like a warlock himself. He is dating Katerina, who is a huge Greek woman with a grand wave of hair, streaked in thick stripes of silver and black. A shy man our age arrived with them and he quietly sits in a corner rolling joints. Very soon Barney and his father are arguing politics with Stanley, and Katerina has put Bob Marley on the stereo and is dancing lazily by herself. I sit next to the young man, Richard, and take puffs from his joints. Soon his shyness lifts and he becomes garrulous. My eyes keep returning to Barney and his father. With both of them animated and focused on their argument, I have time to study their faces.
Even though Dan is so very ill, you can still see the father in the son. They don’t share the same features but their heads and bodies have the same shape. Barney sits in between his father’s legs, one hand casually slung over a knee. Dan has one hand resting on his son’s shoulder. As the argument continues he seems to grow tired and leans back into the sofa.
‘Barney,’ he suddenly barks, ‘can you fetch your old man a glass of water?’ He is wheezing. He leans across the sofa and picks up a black wooden box. Inside are assorted packets and jars of pills. He quickly sorts through them and swallows his selection in one gulp.
‘Bedtime,’ announces Stanley. There is rapid action in the room. Katerina starts clearing things away, Richard goes to wash dishes, and Stanley and Barney take Dan to bed. I help clean up. Barney and his father remain talking in Dan’s bedroom and I’m the one to farewell the guests.
I get ready for bed. I feel like an intruder in the house. Taut, anxious — I am very conscious of the two men talking downstairs — I begin to wonder if it was a mistake to come along on this trip.
When Barney comes into our room he doesn’t put the light on. I watch him undress; the fluorescent streetlight outside our window makes his skin golden. He slides into bed next to me and asks if I mind him smoking.
I have one as well; my first full cigarette for months.
‘He looks really sick, doesn’t he?’
I slowly nod my head.
‘He’s such a funny old geezer. You know what he wanted to talk to me about just now?’ Barney sits up on one elbow. He looks handsome and so very cool in the half-light. Like a great jazz sleeve. ‘He wanted to talk to me about George Jones. He wanted to make sure that they play George Jones at the funeral.’
‘Will you?’
‘Of course.’ He lies flat on his back again, silently smoking, his body not touching mine. Then, mashing the butt of the cigarette into a teacup, he speaks. ‘My mum still can’t stand George Jones. Says it reminds her of too many years stuck in outback outhouses.’ He mimics Sheila. ‘“For fuck’s sake, Dan, can’t you play something else? It’s already enough like frigging Alabama here without having to listen to that redneck country and western crap.”’ He gives a deep sigh. ‘I hated that shit too.’